Tag Archives: Marvin

Usual Rubbish

Sweep up.

Oh, sweep up! I’ve been sweeping up the tips I’ve made! I’ve been livin’ on Gatorade, planning my getaway!

Grab a broom, hey willya?Apologies to Paul Simon. Actually, except for the Gatorade part, that sounds like the story of my life just lately. Trying to tidy up the cavernous squat house we call the Cheney Hammer Mill ahead of the coming winter months. Nothing worse than a dusty house when the snow is up to the rafters – ask anybody who’s spent a few frigid seasons here on the dark side of the year. So, just plying the old broom across the brick floor.

Marvin (my personal robot) is running the vacuum in the background. Not a vacuum cleaner, you understand – an actual time/space vacuum he created with the orgone generating machine Trevor James Constable left behind so many years ago. Amazing how that thing still runs after years of neglect, no one to tend its complex servos and circuit boards, not even our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee, who used to tinker with the thing from time to time before he relocated to his new lab in Madagascar. (Don’t go there! It may no longer even exist, the way he messes with the space-time continuum.)

While I’ve been occupying myself with domestic duties, I’ve been listening to a one-off CD of some of our Ned Trek songs. They need a little work, but I don’t doubt that we’ll release them in some more finalized form one day. I’m contemplating a late year holiday release or two on YouTube, maybe a collection of Ned songs sometime after that. It’s adding up to a lot of material, actually – about 25 songs and counting, pretty much all of which have showed up on THIS IS BIG GREEN in draft form. I know, I know … sounds like another Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Yep, well … that’s how we roll these days.

Hey, listen to me, right? Interstellar tour, new album, YouTube videos. Slow down, maestro, you move too fast. You got to … hoo boy, there’s Paul Simon again. Stop it, man. More later.

Usual Rubbish

Bloody script.

Where are my thumbs? Without my thumbs, I can’t type. Or at the very least, make spaces between what I type. Wait … did I say that? Is someone speaking?

You can start pulling your weight any time.Sorry. You’ll have to forgive me. I’m hip deep in finishing the script for our next episode of Ned Trek, as featured on the THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast. And though I write for a living, writing has always been a teeth-pulling process for me, resulting in sleepless nights, even more sleepless days, and other trepidations too numerous to … to enumerate. Am I making sense? (Possibly not.)

I know what you’re going to say. (Either that or lack of sleep is causing me to hear voices in my head.) Why the hell am I concentrating on a script for a stupid, knock-off podcast horse ballad instead of spending my time working on new songs, producing an album, preparing for another interstellar tour, etc.? My response? Meh. No man can say. I do it because I do it. And because Matt tells me to, which should be enough for anyone. (Or not.)

I would parcel this work out to Marvin (my personal robot assistant), but he really does not have any thumbs, so typing is merely an impossibility for him. Otherwise, he is amply qualified to churn out the kind of poorly constructed melodrama / farce you have come to expect from yours truly. Maybe I ask to little of him. Maybe I shouldn’t let him hang about all day, talking to the electronic stapler, getting machine oil on my vegetables, and so on. Maybe it’s just time he PULLED HIS WEIGHT AROUND HERE. (This is how we communicate with one another. It’s cheaper than texting.)

Anyhow, I expect I’ll see Matt for another recording session this week, then return to my keyboard for another tortuous night of scriptwriting. Oh, the pain of creation! Where is my bourbon, my absinthe, my pain killers, my … I don’t know. I like cat videos. WHERE ARE MY CAT VIDEOS?

Usual Rubbish

Plan ahead.

Is that where I left it? Oh, Jesus. Well … I’ll have to pick up another one, then. It’ll be long gone by now. Bloody inconvenient.

Work harder, not smokier.Oh, hi. Yep, I left my hand-carved walking stick at the bakery again. Second time this month. Last time, some old guy walked off with it … and yes, he was older than ME. Not exactly an heirloom, you understand. It’s actually just a branch that fell off the poplar tree in back of the Cheney Hammer Mill, by the canal. I cut some bits off of it, peeled back some of the bark, and voila! Cheap crutch.

Not that I need a walking stick. Fact is, I’ve been trying to stay close to the Mill as we plan our next interstellar tour. Nothing particularly ambitious, you understand – just a couple of the major star clusters, maybe a jaunt out to Aldebaran. (Matt’s not real crazy about that last one. The gravity’s a little strong for his taste.) I’ve asked Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to crunch some numbers on possible itineraries that might result in, I don’t know, a few extra shekels in our pockets. There’s some smoke coming out of his head, so he must be working on it. Good man.

Where’s the next episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN? Still in development, my friend. These things take time, particularly when you’ve got as full a plate like yours truly. Suffice to say that I am straining myself to the limit simply taking these few moments to write this post. Our production manager, the mansized tuber, is literally hitting me over the head for that script. Yes, tubey – I’m working on it! (Pssst … Don’t tell him I’m not.) It should be another extravaganza, perhaps unprecedented in its sheer stupidity. But don’t take my word for it …. Take …. someone else’s. Not sure where I was going with that.

Well, better get back to work. I’m typing, Tubey! Can’t you hear me typing??!