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Podcast

THIS IS BIG GREEN: December 2017

Audio

Big Green hoists a frosty mug to the holidays with a special yuletide episode of Ned Trek, some weird new songs, and surly banter of a most disagreeable variety. Onward!

This is Big Green – December 2017. Features: 1) Ned Trek 35: The Romney Christmas Special / Ned Trek Reunion Special; 2) Song: Romney Christmas Special theme, by Big Green; 3) Song: Christmas Business, by Big Green; 4) Song: Plastic Head, by Big Green; 5) Song: Bobby Sweet, by Big Green; 6) Song: Christmas To End, by Big Green; 7) Song: He Does It For Spite, by Big Green; 8) Put the phone down: No robots for Christmas; 9) Bad Irish accents; 10) People who died in 2017; 11) Tens of Wives (an impromptu ditty); 12) Beaver pond update; 13) The nacho cheese song; 14) Time to go.

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Usual Rubbish

Know well.

Let’s see how we’re doing here. Shovel the front walk? Check. Peruse the local shops for root vegetables to give to the children? Check. Decorate the forge room with robots? Check. Yep, I haven’t done ANY of those things. (I keep checklists of things not done; a “to-don’t” list, if you will.)

I don’t think I have to tell you that Christmas is a very special time of year around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. No, this I think you know well. Not because we’re religious or Jesus freaks or anything like that. No, the specialness is more about quietude. This sleepy little corner of post-industrial upstate New York gets a little sleepier around the holidays, mostly because people take off to visit relatives, friends, etc., in far-flung corners of the globe, leaving the village almost entirely to ourselves. No beeping delivery trucks backing up to loading docks. No drunken neighbors threatening the kid next door. Peace on Earth, man.

Even Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, has taken off for the week. It looked like he was packing for a conference, but he told me he was headed for some sort of family reunion in Aberdeen. That made me scratch my head. “Do you really need to pack the death ray pistol?” I asked cautiously. He just smiled. Sucks to be HIS second cousin this year. (Maybe any year.)

Hey, you look great, Marvin.This year, I took the bother to replace some of Marvin (my personal robot assistant)’s lights with Christmas bulbs. So yes, he blinks red, green, and gold now when he talks or performs some computational task. (Oh, yes …. he computes. He’s a regular Turing machine, our Marvin … well … a touring machine, at least.) In previous years, we would trim the mansized tuber, in lieu of a Christmas tree, but he’s not having that this year. He’s getting a little touchy as he gets older. Age 18 is a difficult time for sweet potatoes, I hear.

Oh, and don’t think we’ve forgotten you this year. We’re still working on our 2017 Holiday Extravaganza episode of our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, which I don’t mind saying is not in the least bit extravagant. I’ve been doing mixes all week and we should be posting soon, so keep an eye on that empty spot under the tree. Just keep a close watch, then check Twitter or Facebook and see if we’ve posted yet.

Hey, if we don’t see you (and we won’t), happy Christmas and all the rest of it. Now … back to the checklist!

Usual Rubbish

Inside November. (Again.)

Man, is that the wind? Sounds like a freaking freight train. There goes the good weather. It was a nice couple of days, but hey …. all good things must end. (Hey Marvin … got any more platitudes I can borrow? Thanks, man.)

Well, it’s November in upstate New York. Things start slowing down a little bit around these parts. That’s partly why we had time to finish another episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN and post it this past week. Haven’t heard it yet? Well, this is what you have to look forward to:

Ned Trek 34 – Shitty and a Bit of a Stretch. Another Ned Trek non-musical episode, this one loosely based on the classic Star Trek script “City on the Edge of Forever,” originally written by famed sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison. Captain Willard, Mr. Ned, Mr. Perle, and the Nixon android all leap into Earth’s history in an attempt to stop a crazed Doc Coburn from changing the past and foreclosing on the future. Will they succeed? Well … robo Nixon does start a home for wayward clowns. That could make all the difference.

Put The Phone Down. Matt and I go into a wide-ranging discussion about Nixon’s happiest days, Seb Gorka’s descent back into internet racist rants, our somewhat spotty memories of the 1970s Eric Idle / Neil Innes parody of Beatle history called The Rutles, a look inside how Matt works on stuff, and a review of the television we used to watch with our parents back in the 1960s and 70s. Some impromptu singing and swanning about on various instruments.

Posted!Christmas Songs. We did a short block of Big Green Christmas songs by way of a little preview of the holidays to come. These include:

  • Christmas Green, a Willard song from one of our early Ned Trek episodes;
  • Jit Jaguar’s Christmas, a relatively recent recording of a quirky, older number we’ve played on the podcast before;
  • Horrible People, a Ned song from a few years ago, featuring the ubiquitous 40s guys on backup vocals;
  • Christmas Presence, a recent re-recording of one of Matt’s several takes on A Christmas Carol (this song appeared on his amazing 1994 Christmas cassette collection);
  • Make that Christmas Shine, another Willard song from that early Ned Trek Christmas special (the one with Santorum’s Christmas planet).

That’s about it for November. We have some more new stuff coming for the Holiday show, which will appear sometime around the holidays (hopefully).