Interstellar Tour Log: February 25, 2014
Between Neptune and Pluto, or thereabouts
“Steve Lawrence”, Matt says. My reply: “Jennifer Lawrence.” Lincoln’s turn: “Jennifer Hudson.” Everyone looks at anti-Lincoln, who scratches his temple thoughtfully. “You lost two points on that one, Abe,” he says with a smirk.
Right, well … you have to occupy your time somehow in deep space, and rather than doing something productive, we’re playing Name-Chain. Yeah, it’s really fun. You name a famous person, and the player to your right has to name another one with the same first or last name, and around it goes. Lincoln got penalized because if you name someone of the same sex, you lose two points. Then you all multiply your score by the square root of corn meal and, well … it gets complicated after that.
Did we play on Jupiter last week? Well, the less said about that the better. Not sure what happened, but whatever it was it left a big red spot. Not exactly what we had in mind for our interstellar tour in support of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Hell, nobody on Jupiter had even heard of Rick Perry.
Interstellar Tour Log: February 27, 2014
Near Pluto, I think. (That’s the yellow dog with no clothes, right? Yeah … near Pluto.)
Well, the good news for our Interstellar Tour is that we’ve got a whole boatload of possibilities for new venues. NASA just discovered 715 new planets, and scientists say that the law of averages dictates at least 3% of them must have indie music venues. Even better, our sit-in guitarist from Zenon, sFshzenKlyrn, has been to at least half of these newbie planetoids, and has established relationships with the relevant booking agents. He’s out ahead of us now, greasing the wheels a bit. I was hoping he’d take Marvin (my personal robot assistant) with him, but alas … sFshzenKlyrn flies without a spaceship and Marvin gets vertigo easily. Useless bag of bolts.
Did I just say that out loud? Whoops. Let’s see…. “Al Franken” …. “Franken Beans” ….
Well, after several days of drifting aimlessly, we appear to have settled into orbit around Jupiter, the bull moose of the outer solar system. Our sit-in guitarist from the planet Zenon, sFhzenKlyrn, has volunteered to visit the surface of the gas giant to see if there are any performance opportunities, since we’re in the neighborhood. I’d go myself, but alas, I require oxygen and Earthlike temperatures, to say nothing of solid ground. Sure, we’ve played the Great Red Spot before, but that was back in the day. (It’s probably a gas station now, like most of the clubs we played back then.)
I wouldn’t say this news was received with a total lack of enthusiasm. Anti-Lincoln was just dying to get out there and take a dip in one of the nearby liquid methane pools. And for sFshzenKlyrn, the guitarist from Zenon, this sounds like a tropical paradise. There are some issues, however, should we be asked to do an outdoor concert. First, my Kork SV-1 would probably melt at 104C. Second, the helium in the atmosphere would make us all sing like those munchkin dudes from the lollipop gym. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) And if we are contracted to play again next year, that’s just 23 days from now.