Tag Archives: tour

Usual Rubbish

Find a seat and…


There’s a lot I could say at this juncture, Mitch. A whole lot… but I think I’ll just hold my tongue. Don’t want to spend time in a Kaztropharian jail if you don’t have to.

Oh, hi…. We’ve found our way to planet Kaztropharius 137b with both hands, as you might divine from that last bit of dialogue – the latest venue on our ENTER THE MIND: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE tour of the galaxy. How do you tour a whole galaxy exactly? Quite simple – just jump on the ship before we take off… next time. Right now we’re deep in the middle of nowhere, anchored to a planet that seems to like our music (something in the air, I think, makes it sound better up here… perhaps a hallucinogenic quality).  Kaztropharius 137b (I think I’ve got that spelling correct) is a solid little globe with a nickel core. Molten nickel, I’m told – I can’t say for certain, since I’ve never been there, but it seems a reasonable assumption.  

Our first couple of performances here were well received. The third, well… a little less enthusiastic. Okay, so now we’re borderline in trouble with the law on Kaztropharius 137b, and I’m not entirely sure why. It may have something to do with Mitch’s extracurricular activities while we’re busy on stage entertaining the natives. He and the two Lincolns tend to find their own entertainment, whereas Marvin (my personal robot assistant) keeps close to the band, ready to jump in when we forget a chord, or a lyric, or an entire song, perhaps. (He’s got this teleprompter screen he hangs around his neck for handy messaging… though just lately he seems to be running infomercials on the sucker.)

I don’t know – we probably just wore out our welcome. The Kaztropharians have always been fairly hospitable, even when Mitch made the mistake of sending us back through a time vortex to their Pleistocene era back when we visited here in September 2003. (Or was that their “plastocene” era? Not sure.) They didn’t get particularly sore at us, even if we inadvertently changes a few things about their remote history, like the evolution of certain essential plants and animals. (Hey… somebody should have labeled them. How the hell was I supposed to know?) Now Lincoln, Mitch, and company apparently have found another way to cheese them off.  

Anywho, they want us gone, and who can blame them. Three nights worth of Big Green tunes and pretty much any of you would feel the same way. (Don’t all contradict me at once out there. Come on – throw me a freaking bone!)

Usual Rubbish

Heavy week.


You can’t lift that? Are you sure? Try again. Put your back into it. Some robot assistant you turned out to be! Can’t even lift a freaking bottlecap.

Okay, well, here we are on a virtually invisible “supermass” planet orbiting the red giant Antares. Hate to tell you what the fine is for littering on this rock. Something to do with being staked out while drunken cops take pot shots at you with flame throwers. (I think I’ve got that right.) Thing is, the gravity here is outrageous. I admit we’ve all put on a few (and when I say “all” I mean “me”) since our salad days back in the ’80s, but on Antares 3 we’re all heavyweights. In fact, I weigh about seventeen tons here. (I’m talking metric tons, besides.) And when you drop something, it’s like the sucker is welded to the ground. (Of course, in places, the ground is molten, so it might just BE welded to the ground.)

I shouldn’t blame Marvin (my personal robot assistant) for not being able to lift the bottle cap I just dropped. It’s just all the pressure, man, the pressure. About seven tons per square inch – that kind of pressure. Fortunately our endlessly innovative mad scientist Mitch Macaphee cobbled together some protective blisters for us so that we won’t be crushed to a pulp. Good thing too – there’s an ordinance here against hiring pulp, even if it’s musician pulp. Strict in these parts. Sticklers for the law. Hard as rock, these Antareans. In fact…. they’re made of rock. (And they say we rock.)

Why do we go to such places to perform? Well, I’ve told you, certainly – we crave danger. Did I say “danger”? I meant to say money. It’s really just the cash. Harder than hell to find it on Earth, especially with the quirky songbook we carry about with us. At least out here we sound appropriate. Sure, there are downsides. But isn’t life mostly about turning downsides up? (And upsides down?) And so long as we have the incoherence not to notice how bizarre this all is, we’ll be just fine, thank you, just fine.

Well, I’ve wandered a bit. And on this planet, that’s very taxing. Hardly wait for the next leg – someplace called Kaztrofarius 137b. We’re supposed to catch a shuttle there and leave our lousy ship in long-term parking. Sounds simple enough.

Usual Rubbish

Week that was.


Here is the week that was:

Sunday evening, 6:37 p.m. – Mitch Macaphee test-fires the main engine on our ramshackle space craft; the one that will supposedly carry us to many a far-flung rock venue in the galaxy. Based on what I heard, I have my doubts about this vehicle. It took Mitch about fifteen pulls of that rip cord to get the thing smoking, and that’s about all it did… smoke. No lift. Matt just looked on and shook his head. I saw that and shook my head. Whole lot of shakin’ going on ’round here.

Monday afternoon, 12:45 p.m. – Sumptuous lunch of cheese doodles and expired raisins. Did I say sumptuous? I meant nauseating. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is practicing his galley skills. He has volunteered to be our ship’s cook. Lincoln refuses to call him “cookie” (as Marvin has asked to be called). Anti-Lincoln vehemently disagrees with that refusal. We shake our heads, yet again.

Monday night, 10:30 p.m. – Oh, great – now there’s drinking. No, not the band. (I’m on the wagon, for one, after that last tour.) I mean the man-sized tuber. He’s chugging great gobs of Miracle Grow in hopes of making himself too big to fit into his interstellar terrarium. Apparently he has come to despise that thing, as he does any object that resembles a pot. Fortunately, he’s on wheels, so no matter how large he gets, we can push him along. Or pull him behind. Do plants breathe?

Wednesday morning, 3:00 a.m. – This isn’t a legitimate entry… it’s just the name of a Simon and Garfunkel album. Pretend you didn’t read this.

Thursday afternoon, 2:45 p.m. – Fuel shipment arrives from Madagascar. (Don’t ask me. Mitch found the vendor.) Not sure how our spacecraft is supposed to run on compact alfalfa pellets. This shit looks like rabbit food to me. Mitch assures us that this will carry us from one end of the galaxy to the other. And there is much rejoicing.

Friday night, just past 7:00 p.m. – I finally find that ballpoint pen I lost last week. Was scribbling a threatening note to my creditors, and in my incandescent rage, the thing flipped out of my hand and rolled away. Oh… and we started our countdown to liftoff, by the way. I won’t tell you how far we’ve gotten.