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Up the creek.

What the hell, Mitch. A week ago you didn’t care whether we went on this tour or not, and now you’re acting like the mill is on fire. What’s the matter with you, boy? And don’t point that deadly laser at me – you know how nervous I get about that kind of thing.

Well, it seems like Mitch is in kind of a hurry now to get off this miserable pimple of a planet known as Earth. Not sure what’s behind the sudden change of mood. He woke up in a bit of a mood Wednesday afternoon after a long night of what I assume was mad science experimentation, and now he’s all about planet KIC 8462852. That’s fine and good, right, but if we’re going there in the Plywood 9000 rocket we rented from SpaceY, well … we may have trouble breaking out of Earth orbit. In fact, we may have trouble clearing the treeline. The truth is, that thing isn’t getting off the ground at all.

Nah. That'll never work.What’s our plan B? Not sure we have one. There’s plan 9 from outer space, but hey … that’s a movie. Plan B might be to hunker down in the Cheney Hammer Mill, record some more songs, and venture out only to retrieve nuts and berries from the nearby Adirondack woodlands. Or pizzas from the nearby Adirondack Pizza Parlor. Or beer from the nearby …. well, you get the idea. I’m not at all sure why we opt for these interstellar tours in the first place. They’re not profitable. They’re long and pointless. They’re occasionally dangerous to the point of being life-threatening. But then, a desk job will kill you after 20-25 years, so … it’s probably just as well.

I told you last week about the latest episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast, which should be posted soon-ish. We’ve done rough mixes of all 7 songs, and it’s a strange lot, I will admit, but you be the judge. Hey, be the jury as well. What the fuck, go ahead and throw our sorry asses in music jail. At least THAT would keep me from having to climb aboard a Plywood 9000 rocket with a madman at the helm. P.S. …. HAAAALP!

Usual Rubbish

Last one out.

Try moving it to the other side of the tail fin. No, not that one! The dorsal tail fin! Okay, now hit it with a hammer a few times. Nothing? Hmmm …. how about if we light it on fire. Sometimes that helps.

Oh, damn. I didn’t realize I was typing this all into our blog. (I think that’s called auto-typing.) Well, as you can tell, Big Green is working furiously to get our rented Plywood 9000 space rocket ready for launch before the election on Tuesday, when all hell is likely to break loose. At least, that’s what the little voices in my head tell me. There are times when you feel compelled to stay and fight the good fight, and then there are those other times when you … well … decide to take a rented rocketship to another planet. That’s a hasty decision, I know, but again … those persistent little voices!

Seriously, I am looking forward to a perhaps non-remunerative jaunt out to the Kuiper belt if only to free ourselves from the pressures of terrestrial life. You have no idea how much maintenance an abandoned Hammer Mill requires. If you’re wondering why we haven’t put out a new episode of our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN in nearly two months, there’s part of your answer, my friend. At least on planet KIC 8462852 we might find time to finish a project here and there. And my guess is that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) won’t have to worry about being apprehended by Trump’s ICE deportation force. (He has nightmares about that stuff.)

Is that really where the fin goes on this thing?Sure, we’ve had our head down with music production just lately. Matt and I are working on 7 songs for release on the next episode of Ned Trek, the Star Trek political parody that comprises the core of our TIBG podcast. You might say, 7 songs! That’s practically a freaking album, man! Why don’t you just put out another album, freak!? Well, first of all …. don’t call me “album freak”. I don’t deserve that. After all, we haven’t put out an album in three years. (And our LAST album was Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, so technically we haven’t put out a sane album in eight years.) What was I saying again?

Right. Spacecraft maintenance can make your mind wander. Check back a little later this week when I don’t have a monkey wrench in my fist. (That’s what I’m doing wrong! I need a rocket wrench!)

Usual Rubbish

Millsville.

Sometimes if you’re up early enough in the morning, you can see the first rays of the sun breaking over the ruins of the abandoned mill next door. I think they made broom handles there or something. Now it’s just some disheveled wreck that the sun rises over. Hey …. been there.

Yes, friends, it’s been many, many suns and even more moons since I started this blog about Big Green. We now have posts that stretch back nearly as far as those rays of sunlight. A rich body of balderdash, and it’s getting balder all the time. Sometimes you forget where this all began – in some crappy dive on the west end of the city, the walls smelling of beer, dog crap on the stage, and a bartender who hates your ass. A lot of music careers start that way. Ours, on the other hand, was never anything else. (Yes, we are like most bands – spectacularly unsuccessful and damn proud of it.)

So we took to the hammer mill and started hammering out recordings. That was in the nineties. Since then, we’ve put out three albums and a bunch of songs on the podcast. Christ on a bike – I think we’re up to more than 50 songs since releasing Cowboy Scat in 2013. (Time for another album, right?) We’re still recording on an old Roland platform, trying to transition to Uh, I don't think so, Marivn.something more appropriate to the century we’re living in. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has suggested we start recording on cylinders or wire. Damn it, it’s been done, Marvin! Come up with something new, like, I don’t know … recording on bricks.

Some five years ago we started the podcast, and it is still sputtering along, though getting slower … slow like the two thousand year-old man. Fact is, we’re thinking about launching another podcast that would be devoted exclusively to bloviating – something we could get out a bit more regularly. And if it ends up half as popular as THIS IS BIG GREEN, we could nearly double our listenership.  Fan… tastic.

So, on we go. We’re in production for another podcast episode, doing the songs right now. (Damn, they’re strange.)