Tag Archives: mitch

Usual Rubbish

Yours truly.

Our rocket test failed. Only two weeks to launch date and the thing can’t get off the ground. Some kind of rust blight has destroyed our food supply. And the gravity in the Hammer Mill (at least around Mitch’s lab) is intermittent and untrustworthy. Sounds like a good time to open the old mail bag!

Here’s one from fairly close by – a little town called Philadelphia.

Dear Big Green:

Your music is full of obscure references to old television shows. Why don’t you work more historical subject matter into your songs? That might attract a higher quality listener (like me).

Respectfully yours,

Horton Pompideau (signed in what appears to be grape juice)

Well, Horton. I’m glad you asked that question. In fact, if I were to make up a phony listener question, it would likely be something very much like that. (Fortunately, my strong ethical sensibilities keep me from stooping that low.) Actually, we do reference historical events, such as in the song Quality Lincoln, which was featured on the first episode of our new podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN.  The thing is – and this is important – that song is as much about television as all the other ones. It’s like history thrown into the blender of television and turned up to “frappe” speed with the lid left off. So big chunks of history are flying out of the thing, and what you’re left with is a musical slurry of factoids, mostly unrelated to one another. That’s the creative process, man. Live with it.

Here’s another one:

Dear Big Green:

Final notice. Remit outstanding balance of $47.85 by close of business 12 September 2011. Non-compliance may result in criminal or civil penalty.

Warmly,

Ivan Pitcairn, Collections Officer
Hegemonic Energy Consortium and Worm Farm.

Oh, hey Ivan – long time no hear from. Didn’t I tell you the check is in the mail? If you have a problem with that, take it up with the postal service.  I only write the checks, not deliver them.

Okay, we’ve got time for one more. This looks like another local query… very local…

Dear Joe:

Get your butt back in the studio. And stop making up those ludicrous letters. We’ve got work to do, you fricking idiot!

Gratefully yours,

Matt Perry

Hey… it’s a little hard to argue with this writer. I have been slacking. Back to my padded (or at least sound retardant) cell, then.

Usual Rubbish

Cheap ride.

Well, I guess THAT didn’t work. Spectacular failure, old man. What’s next on the agenda? Setting toast on fire? Turning gold into lead? Some other feat of science?

Oh, hello. If you detect some sarcasm in my voice, it’s no accident. I’m merely ripping on Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, whose latest experiment/get weird quick scheme was an abysmal failure. Sometimes I think old Mitch is losing his touch. Sometimes I think we of Big Green should be looking around for another mad science advisor. Not to replace Mitch, you understand, but rather to keep him company in his dotage. Maybe that would give him someone to talk to about how his time travel experiment was about as amazing as someone hiding in a closet for half an hour. No, Mitch – I’m not kidding… it was just that bad. I’ve seen grade school magic tricks that put that to shame, man.

All right, maybe I’m being a bit too hard on the guy. Frankly, I’m a little miffed at him over another matter entirely. (I think the psychologists call that “transfer” … or perhaps “coconut”… one of those two.) As you know, we’ve been searching the local bulletin boards, want ads, and health food store countertop flyers for some kind of conveyance that will reliably carry us from planet to planet on Big Green’s upcoming [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011. Naturally we asked Mitch to keep his good eye – the one that doesn’t see evil things – open for anything vaguely appropriate to the task. Would that I had bitten back those words!

I am reminded of the old saw (hack saw?), “be careful what you ask for.” Nothing truer could be said of Mitch’s spacecraft search. He was gone for a couple of days this week and came back with a largish missile in tow. (No, it wasn’t a “tow missile”, dammit.) Mitch pulls up and says, in effect, “Here’s your ride.” And I’m looking at this thing, my mouth agape. Matt’s mouth was agape as well, as was John’s. (Lincoln’s was not agape, but it was open slightly.) I mean, that missile was battered, leaking, beat to hell. I think he bought it off of Col. Gaddafi, or perhaps from rogue elements of his famous “kung fu” brigade.  It looks like a freaking SCUD that someone never bothered to drain the fuel out of. And … worse yet … we’re supposed to fly to Andromeda in that bloody thing?

No way in hell, man. No way am I getting in that lousy hunk of junk. And when I say, no way, I mean only under certain limited circumstances. (Let the record show that I’m beckoning to my counsel.)

Usual Rubbish

Pre-launch blues.

Gonna’ pump some liquid oxygen… and twirl my sextant dial. I said I’m gonna’ pump some liquid oxygen… and twirl my sextant dial. And when I lift you off that launch pad… baby you know you’ll ride in style. Oh, yeah!

Yeah, sounds like we need a little more chunkiness in the rhythm section. What? Oh… we have visitors. Hello, blogsters. It’s your old pal Bozo. Nothing like a little blues to take your mind of your troubles, eh? And a little country western to put it back on ’em. (Keep talkin’ like that, and more than a few Texans’ll want to treat me kinda ugly.)  Yeah, we’re just working our way down to our departure time. What will our interstellar conveyance be? Glad you asked. It’s about time someone asked. No one around the Hammer Mill has bothered inquiring. A strange disinterest has taken hold of Big Green and its entourage, apparently. It entered the room like a miasma, pulled up a chair and made itself at home.

Honestly, I don’t know how we’ll be hopping from planet to planet, star system to star system, on Big Green’s [INSERT NAME HERE] Interstellar Tour 2011. Mitch Macaphee was going to arrange a short term lease arrangement of some kind. He knows a guy who knows a guy, apparently. I think the delay comes out of the fact that the guy the guy he knows knows is, in fact, him. (Is there an echo in here? Wouldn’t be surprised.) So what the hell, maybe we don’t have reliable private transportation from Betelgeuse to Kaztropharius 137b. We can always take a commercial flight. There’s always priceline or expedia or whatever the fuck.

I think the reason why Mitch dropped the ball on this is that he’s been obsessed with his latest dabbling into time travel techniques. He’s got this new one – check this out. It’s a means by which people in the past can tunnel into the future and wait until we normal, moment by moment time travelers catch up with them. Mitch made a device about the size of an iPod that anchors you in time, so that as everyone else moves forward with the passing moments, you stay in one moment. (So it it’s 4:37p.m. on Tuesday when you hit the button, for you it will remain that time while time ticks on for everybody around you.) Then you hit another switch, and the thing launches you through a wormhole into the not-so-distant future – like an hour from now – where you sit frozen in a single moment and wait for “real time” to catch up with you. Then like a mail bag being snagged by a passing train, you start moving with normal time once it arrives.

Anyhow, you can see why he gets distracted. He’s sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) on a test run. We should get to his moment…. any moment now.