Tag Archives: podcast

Usual Rubbish

Wrap it up.

Where did those scissors go? Right … I’ll just use my teeth then, shall I? What the hell. I hate the freaking holidays! Especially when they get this close. Christmas looks a lot better from a distance.

Yes, my friends, you caught us in the middle of another Cheney Hammer Mill meltdown. They’re becoming more frequent in this new era, I must admit. Still, I have cause – trying to wrap up another holiday extravaganza, and it’s not going all that well, frankly. I’ve got a em-effin’ cold, for one thing. What’s the other thing? Huh … Don’t remember. I always forget shit like that when I have a cold.

One thing I’m having trouble wrapping is this year’s Christmas show. It’s a little hard to voice these things without a voice. It’s like playing sousaphone parts on a tambourine. So the choice is either, croak everyone a merry Christmas, or …. we’ll have to cancel Christmas. There’s nothing I can do – it’s this weather. (Okay, now I’m randomly quoting dialog from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Another symptom of my illness.) We’ll be a little late in posting this year, let me put it that way. But there are consolations.

Hey, uh ... that's a really creepy get-up, Marvin.We’re thinking we might post last year’s extravaganza as a Ned Trek episode at NedTrek.com. And if I can get my voice working again, I might try to do more of a straight music podcast, playing selections from our holiday music catalog of the last 20 years. There are a couple of outtakes from 2000 Years To Christmas that have never seen the light of day. We’ve got some more recent recordings composed around a holiday theme. I might pack that together like a mincemeat pie and toss it out to the hungry masses as we continue to work on our current marathon-like production. Part-timers!

Anyhow, if you can tear yourself away from your holiday table in the coming days, look for additional posts between now and the new year. I’ll be holed up here in the Cheney Hammer Mill, hammering away at some piece of junk. Stick a bow on it and send it off! Feliz navidad.

Usual Rubbish

It’s about time.

I don’t know, I’m thinking it’s time. What do you think? Not sure? Okay. When do you think you’ll have an answer? I don’t know about you, but … I’m thinking it’s time.

Okay, well … I’ll be frank with you. (Just call me “Frank” from now on.) We are grasping at straws here in Big Green land, now that our interstellar tour has been scuttled. And here it is, the holidays. We were thinking that we’d be traversing interstellar space when Christmas week came, but no dice. Trouble is, that was going to be our excuse for not getting anyone presents – sorry folks, we’re headed to a big gig on planet KIC 8462852. No time to shop! Well, THAT’S out the window. Any other good ideas for cheapskates?

Marvin (my personal robot assistant) humbly suggested we hand out signed copies of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, which appropriately follows a theme somewhat tangentially related to the holidays. Of course, we’ve resorted to that tactic before – it’s been a full 17 years since we put the sucker out, so everyone we know (and quite a few people we don’t know) has a copy. By this point, they’re stacking them under broken table legs and using them for drink coasters. I saw one of our friends re-purposing the jewel cases. Talk about a post-apocalyptic music hell-scape – people are mining our album like it’s a natural resource. (And it’s anything but natural.)

Give them discsThe gift of music is always an early resort for us. That’s basically how 2000 Years To Christmas was born – Matt writing songs as holiday gifts, back in the day. Then there’s the gift of podcasting. There, we have some good news and some bad news. The GOOD news is that we are working on another Christmas pageant as we speak – a Ned Trek holiday classic that will have some new songs embedded in it. The BAD news is that … at the rate we’re going, it likely won’t be finished until AFTER Christmas, so … hot holiday leftovers are coming your way.

For the holiday week itself, we may put out a rerun podcast with some additional “members only” elements. (Oh, right – we don’t have membership levels. Scratch that.) Back to the grind, boys!

Usual Rubbish

Inside November.

Drat. Scuttled by a solar flare. That was a serious oversight on the part of that person we put in charge of planning our interstellar tour. Who was that again? Let’s see …. oh, right. It was me. Well … no ice cream for me tonight.

Okay, well … looks like we’re having the interstellar version of a rainy-day schedule today, but instead of coloring books and tunafish sandwiches, let’s break open the November episode of our THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast and see what’s crawling around inside.

Ned Trek 30: “The Deadly Queers”. This thirtieth episode of our Star Trek parody is based on the classic episode “The Deadly Years“, in which the Enterprise command crew is affected by radiation that quickly turns them all into raving geezers. In our version, radiation causes the Free Enterprise crew to become progressively more gay – a fate worse than death for our hyper-conservative, free market, confederate flag-waving heroes. There’s a lot of tasteless swanning about and gay sex references that none of us are proud of, but hey …. satire. Extra special appearances by Senators Lindsay Graham, Roy (aka “Roy-toy”) Blunt, and Bernie Sanders.

Songs: Embedded in Ned Trek 30 are seven new Big Green songs. These, as always, are rough mixes of recordings that will, in some version, appear on a future album or albums yet to be determined. Here’s what we’ve got:

Tinkerbell Neocon – Medium tempo guitar-driven rock duet sung by Perle and Doc Coburn. This one gets stuck in my head, quite frankly, so beware!

Seven songs?Fairy Dust – Another dirge by Sulu (the one original cast member that is somehow part of this “next degeneration” version of Star Trek). Very moody little number.

Oklahoma Mo – A slightly gay Doc Coburn nod to his cow town oil-patch upbringing.

Space Fandango – Romney song that should have been a tango (and may still be one day), all about Stephanie O (the captain’s Don Ho). Ummm … hilarious.

Let Me Go – The android Nixon does this over-the-top sixties rock ballad about needing to go to the can. I don’t think we’re breaking new ground here, but it’s certainly the first song I’ve ever done that places having to take a piss in the context of mid 20th century presidential history.

Potato Salad – Ned song with kind of a sixties vibe. No, it doesn’t make any sense, even in the context of this ridiculous and borderline offensive episode of Ned Trek, but here it is anyhow.

Spanking Machine – Pop song, sung by Willard, that harkens back to his boarding school days.

Put The Phone Down: Matt and I kvetch about the Trump election, rail at a useless media and an even more useless Democratic party, and look ahead in dread at what outrages lie before us. Laugh a minute.