Turn it on, the radio.


No, no, Lincoln. You need to pull harder on the string. Hold it up, like this... see? That's right. That's... wrong! The storm cloud is to the east, man, to the east!

Hoo, man... You got me at a bad time. Just here with the Big Green posse on this bizarro version of the planet Earth - one on which different historical periods co-exist like folks at a multicultural retreat. Our traveling companion, Abe Lincoln (or is it anti-Lincoln? They both tagged along and I'm having trouble telling them apart), is trying to work out how to fly a kite. He got the idea from fellow prominent historical figure Benjamin Franklin, who arrived on board the Lusitania to participate in a little recreational kite-play here on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. I'm encouraging Lincoln to take in a little slack on that kite line, and he's just not getting it. Ben Franklin has offered a few helpful tips, but he keeps getting distracted by his Blackberry. (Guy just can't put it down, for chrissake. Hope he doesn't drive.) What the hell... you'd think Lincoln would trust me after all we've been through together. Sheesh.

I don't want you to go away thinking we're just blowing time down here. Actually, it's probably been about as productive from a musical standpoint as any tour we've been on since we began our interstellar barnstorming some ten long years ago. For one thing, it's easy enough to find a town on this time-challenged planet that hasn't heard any of our songs, let alone those of Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, and so on. There's this one village up the road that is stuck in 1957. We can go there, set up, and play a bunch of Elvis Costello numbers, pretend they're our own, and people eat it up like free pizza. Amazing! And when we introduce Marvin (my personal robot assistant), the crowd goes wild. It's almost as though they've never seen a brass, electrode-encrusted robot before. Seriously, it's tempting to just stay here and bask in something that at least looks like success, but.... that's not what we're about. No, sir... Big Green never takes the easy way out. If we stand for anything, it's for doing things the hard way. Praise, money, critical acclaim, the love of millions - that's not for us, man. Am I right, boys? I SAID, AM I RIGHT??

W.t.f. - they must be over in the next town, soaking up the praise, money and critical acclaim. No matter. I've got Lincoln, anti-Lincoln, and the man-sized tuber to help me get our crate back in the air and off this too-congenial-by-half globe. In fact, it's quite fortunate that Ben Franklin ambled along at this juncture - he with his kite flying, static electricity generating trick. Mitch Macaphee tells me our solar batteries are dead and we need a jump from somebody. However, the automobile is nowhere in evidence here. (I've seen oxcarts, chariots, skateboards... no cars). So here we are, kite in the air, key on the string, hoping for a lightning strike. Futile, you suppose? Perhaps you're right. Times like these I always turn to the wisdom of brother Matt:

You can if you believe you can, you can
You can surely believe
That you can fly
Over the ocean in blue sky
And you can land
Onto the atoll, on the black sand

Must be true, damnit. It's on the freaking album.

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