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Showing posts from 2012

Under the holiday hood.

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Man goddamn, it's come and gone again, hasn't it? Those freaking holidays seem to take fifty years to get here and then they're gone in five seconds. And we've only done one miracle ride!* Anyway, as some of you already know, we have posted our second annual Christmas podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN: Holidaze 2012 , a nearly 100-minute extravaganza that dwarfs even the titanic pointlessness of last year's effort and renders anew the promise of fractured Christmases to come. Many of you know that I am not given to wild exaggeration, but I have to say that THIS holiday special is THE MOST AMAZING HOLIDAY SPECIAL since the BIRTH of THE JESUS. Let me emphasize that I have to say that because, well, our sponsor, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., has demanded a higher number of downloads on this episode. And when they don't get what they want, they get something else ... which is ugly. So... gun to my head, I most certainly would. All right - no lie, there is a l

On the money.

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Fiscal cliff approaching, and no action. One would hope that the notion of its being a financial catastrophe on the order of 2007-8 has been greatly exaggerated, but I would not recommend taking a chance when people are dependent on unemployment benefits and other programs that will come under the knife of sequestration. Boehner and his conference truly are ridiculous. When I think of the extent to which they can get what they want out of this president, I have to think that they are completely out of their collective tree. When all they have to do is accept slightly higher marginal taxes on rich people, you would think this would be a no-brainer for them. (Indeed, this Congress gives a whole new meaning to the term no-brainer.) But I guess they're willing to go to the mat for millionaires. Otherwise, why would they not simply extend tax cuts to the bottom 98% of taxpayers now , today, then negotiate the rest later? Because we are one of their bargaining chips. I want to make ce

This Is Big Green: Holidaze 2012

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This Is Big Green: Holidaze (December) 2012 Big Green marks the pagan holiday known as Christmas with a full-blown installment of Ned the talking horse, three new Big Green songs, and more. Dig it. This is Big Green - Holidaze 2012. Features: 1) Ned Trek V, starring Mr. Ned, Romney's Dancing Horse; 2) Skit: Charlie in the Box and the first semi-automatic Christmas; 3) Put the phone down: Holidays and the recently departed remembered; 4) Song: Merry Christmas, Children, by Big Green; 5) Song: Father Christmas, by Big Green; 6) Song: Martha's Christmas, by Big Green; 7) Song: Christmas Spirit, by Big Green; 8 ) Matt's encounter with an invasive species; 9) Song: Head Cheese Log, by Big Green; 10) We collapse in festive exhaustion Go To Download Page >

Holly jolly nuthin.

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Is this thing on? Are you sure? Trouble is, Mitch, I can't believe anything you say now. I need independent confirmation of every bland assurance you give me. Hello? Hel- lo ? Oh, well ... I think this blog is working again. Greetings from the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in beautiful upstate New York, where your friends and neighbors in Big Green are busily preparing for what may be the most ambitious holiday celebration we've seen in years. Bigger than, well... bigger than last year's, which, to be frank, wasn't much. So I should say the biggest in year . Anyway, it takes a lot of preparation - that's the point. And now that we have the Web site back up and running (I am told), we can turn our collective attention back to the impending festivities. What's on the docket? So glad you asked. We are planning another holiday extravaganza on THIS IS BIG GREEN , our monthly podcast, featuring special guest appearances, new music, strange, unidentifiable noises,

Stuff and things.

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Been off this pony for a couple of weeks - kind of unusual for me, frankly - so I'm just going to run through a few items. Bear with me. Guns, guns, guns. The sickening Connecticut grade school massacre appears to have moved the discourse on guns a bit over the last week, as you might expect any mass slaughter of innocents should. Call me a cynic, but I've reached the point where my expectations are extremely low when it comes to finding solutions to national problems. Once all of those young, young (too goddamn young) people are in the ground, my guess is that the backpedaling will begin in earnest. We are dealing with a hard core of tri-corner hatted fanatics, driven by an industry hungry for profit. "Take away our 30-round ammo clips and next you'll come for our flintlocks!" With each outrage we imagine reaching a turning point, but it never seems to come. I'm ready to be pleasantly surprised, but... it would indeed be a surprise. Fiscal cliffhanger.

Fadeout Groove #4: Monkey

Okay, I've been lazy on posts. So here's another fadeout groove - this one called "Monkey". Strange. http://www.big-green.net/bg/?p=4563

Update at 11.

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Hi, kids. Still getting stuff back together here at the mill. No small task, I can tell you. First of all, these server wires somehow got all tangled and misdirected. I've been plugging and unplugging them into different holes all freaking day, and I'm not at all sure I've got it right. (Last time I booted the server, Trevor James Constable's Orgone Generating Machine fired up. That's just all wrong. Mitch is working on it as we speak. If we speak.) It's hard to get good mad science help these days. Even so, you would expect any mad scientist worth his salt to be able to conjure up a Web site on demand. No soap. Had to conjure it myself, no help from anybody. That's probably why it ... well ... blows. More from us later. There's something happening in the reactor room.

No soap.

The Hammer Mill web server is down, so I'm putting this note out on blogger only. Suffice to say, we have Mitch Macaphee looking into it right now. He's got the hood up, and he's donned his coveralls. This could take a while. Stay tuned for more updates. Aloha. 

Readying.

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The studio is stuffed to the gills already. Yes, it has gills! How do you think it breathes underwater? Didn't you go to grammar school? Oh, right. Sometimes I forget that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) isn't an undereducated human like myself. He is, in fact, a mechanical man. Much must be explained to him, and what can't be explained must be programmed in by force, if necessary. That's the lot of a robot assistant, I'm afraid. Work, work, work. Anyhow... the quintessential American holiday is now over. (We also survived that day that comes before Black Friday ... what do they call it? Thanksgiving?) Time to fold up the balloons, disassemble the parade floats, and send the marching bands marching home. While many find the Macy parade enjoyable, it is not a simple matter to serve as the end point of that annual extravaganza. Just finding enough space to store deflated Spiderman is proving more challenging than you might imagine. Sure, without air in his a

Over the edge.

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The fiscal cliff is just ahead. Be afraid, be afraid! Are you afraid yet? Well, you're supposed to be. Going over the "fiscal cliff" is the worst thing that can possibly happen - worse even than ... I don't know ... losing your Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. Friends, this is the oldest trick in the book. Our leaders have done their best to bankrupt the government over the last decade and a half, coupling undeclared wars with massive tax cuts, crashing the economy through their vaunted hands-off approach to the financial sector, etc. Now when it comes time to pay the tab, guess who's picking it up? Not a big surprise that they're running out on the check. They only do it every freaking time. Listening to the series of Republican interviews that is NPR the other day, I heard some talk of raising the Medicare eligibility age as one means of covering their failed fiscal policy decisions. That has to take the prize as the stupidest idea ever proposed

Helladay house.

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What? What time is it? It's too early, tubey. You'll get your Miracle Gro at 9:00 and not before. Christ on a bike. Oh, hi out there. As I'm sure you already know, the morning after Thanksgiving is always a force to be reckoned with. Especially when you have a mansized tuber who has just discovered juicing. (He's trying to win some of his bi-weekly pickup basketball games, but I think even with the Miracle Gro he's reaching.) Morning starts kind of early around here - sometimes before noon, even. (You fellow rock musicians out there better sit down: There is a thing called morning. It's not just another hallucination. That's right ... I'm talking to you , pothead.) Excuse that digression. Hope you had a wonderful, glorious Thanksgiving, full of holiday cheer and/or anticipation (if you spent most of it queueing up in front of Wal-Mart or Best Buy). Perhaps you spent part of your morning watching the bizarre spectacle known as the annual Macy's T

Gaza misery.

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All-out war has been averted in Gaza. That's a good thing. The bad thing? More than 160 Palestinians were killed over the last week, more than half of them (in excess of 90 individuals) were civilians. Speaking on Public Radio International, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said that " most of the people hit in Gaza deserved it ". Earlier today, with the cease-fire in place, a Palestinian man was shot along the border of Gaza inside what the IDF terms a "no-go" zone, but also in an area transited by Palestinian farmers on the way to their fields. This is not an unusual occurrence and is probably only being reported in the U.S. because of the conflict/cease fire story. This happens all the freaking time. You don't have to be a cynic to believe that Netanyahu wanted this flare-up, with elections just weeks away. He is following in a long tradition of Israeli political leaders who know that the iron fist earns votes. Already he has reconfigur

Splitting Lincoln.

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I think I left my guitar plugged in. I've been hearing that buzzing all night freaking long. What's that? It's the orgone generating device? Jesus on a bike ... that thing again? Hey howdy. Welcome back to the hammer mill. Who won the Lincoln contest? Still up in the air. My bets are on Anti-Lincoln, but that's just a hunch. He does have an ace in the hole - namely, Trevor James Constable's orgone generating device, the monstrosity of modern engineering that brought him here from the past in the first place. Anti-Lincoln seems to think that by stepping into that thing and turning it up to eleven, he'll get the full Daniel Day Lewis treatment. Never can tell what' going to happen with mad science technology. Just ask Mitch Macaphee - he invented Marvin (my personal robot assistant) after all. Anyway, anti-Lincoln must have dialed the wrong settings into that orgone generating device because it split him into two equal parts: Jerry Lewis and Doris Day. Cl

The admiral.

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A little more than a week after the election, and McCain is at it again. God, I wish he would stick to making frozen sweet potato french fries! (That's not him? My bad.) He is vowing to get to the bottom of this ... my word ... bigger than average scandal surrounding the attack on the Benghazi consulate and the killing of ambassador Chris Stevens and his security detail. The Senator is so determined that he held a press conference while the committee he chairs was receiving testimony from the CIA in closed session. That's right ... he skipped the session where details of the attack were being disclosed to complain that the administration has refused to disclose details of the attack. Seemingly freakish and perhaps the product of a superannuated brain, McCain is simply clinging to the mast of the ship he's been commanding since his arrival in the Senate. The Benghazi controversy was cooked up during the campaign to try to drive a wedge into Obama's national security ad

Honest, Abe?

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No, no. Not that hat. That's a porkpie hat. Don't you know anything? The great emancipator would never have worn a hat like that. Not unless he played the saxophone. ( Did he play the saxophone? Best ask.) Oh, right.... I'm keying this into the internets, not merely speaking to some disembodied listener. What was I thinking? Right, well.... as busy as things get here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in beautiful upstate New York, we never seem to stop finding other things to do with our time. Last week Marvin (my personal robot assistant) discovered numismatics ... with a little encouragement from his creator, Mitch Macaphee, who was really attempting to program a penchant for petty larceny into his brass hide. Not one of Mitch's proudest moments, convincing Marvin that lifting stray coins out of people's pockets is how coin collecting works. (That mad science grant from the Cato Institute must not have come through.) Anyway, there was that. Then there was t

Better than worse.

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Election's over. Dodged another bullet there. That was close ... sort of... if three million human votes and about 100 electoral votes is a thin margin. Thank you, black people, brown people, and women for saving us (i.e. white men) from ourselves once again. Without your help, John Bolton would likely be the next secretary of state. You should be very, very proud of what you kept us from doing - that being, quite literally, driving this country into yet another war. Now it's merely possible that we will have a war with Iran, not likely. A dangerous state of affairs, to be sure, but not a guaranteed catastrophe. Nice work. Post-election used to be a time to reflect on what happened, what was decided. There appears to be some of that going on, though probably not enough. Suffice to say that the predictions on the center-left were far more accurate than those on the popular right. It was more than a little cheering to see Karl Rove scrambling for data on Fox News after Ohio wa

Songageddon.

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Are you all right? You sure? Good, good. Yeah, we're okay. Head above water, you know. Always a good thing. Oh, sorry. I was just on the phone with Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, who wisely chose this week to travel to Madagascar for a conference on ... I don't know, monster-making best practices, something like that. Good time to leave, what with the hurricane and all that. Up here at the Cheney Hammer Mill, we implemented our disaster preparedness plan. Basically that involves closing the windows, drawing the curtains, and blocking our ears. Occasionally someone lights a candle. (When it comes to disasters, we're not good.) Fortunately, the gods of rock and water were smiling down upon us this past Monday-Tuesday. That monster storm took an extreme left hook and missed us clean, somehow. Not that you could tell that was the case by looking at this Hammer Mill. It appears as though it's been through hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes and pestilence. (Some

W.B.G. (We'll be gone)

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Back before the start of the financial crisis in 2008, the guiding principle of Wall Street bankers was i.b.g./y.b.g. - when the whole thing comes crashing down, "I'll be gone and you'll be gone." We will get away with it. That was prescient, to say the least. They pretty much did get away from it, except a handful of bad actors that hurt the wealthy as well as the ordinary. (Bernie Madoff is one of those.) As we stand at the cusp of another presidential election, witnessing the terrifying aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, it's clear that for the "conservative" (i.e. statist reactionary) side of the political equation, i.b.g./y.b.g. appears to apply to the climate crisis as well. Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has adopted his party's Luddite stance on global warming, advocating massive expansion of fossil fuel extraction, processing, and use and joining the crackpot consensus on the right that sees extreme weather as a series of unfortunate (and whol

The month that was.

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Wait, shhh... Did you hear that sound? Yeah, that sound. That's the sound of another podcast being posted. Praise be. What's in the program this month? Well.... pretty much anything we could find lying about the Hammer Mill. Bits and bobs, as they say. Is it lame? You be the judge! My lips are sealed on the quality issue. But I will talk about what's in the bulging box that is THIS IS BIG GREEN - OCTOBERCAST 2012 . An hour and twenty of sheer audio madness, featuring: Mr. Ned, Romney's Talking Horse - Episode 3: Ned Trek. The most ambitious in the Mr. Ned series yet, Romney's famous talking dressage horse takes Willard on a journey through a space/time wormhole to an alternative dimension of television mediocrity. Yes, Mitt is made commander of the starship Free Enterprise, and he and his crew of neocons take on an extraterrestrial threat that only a cash-starved special effects department could conjure. Hi-jinx ensue. (Special guest appearance by former presi

Shameless.

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In our monthly podcast, it's my job to do a cheap (dirt cheap) imitation of Mitt Romney. (Matt's got the heavy lifting - he has to talk like a horse.) And I think you can tell if you listen to more than one episode, my impression of him is shifting. But I think you might agree that Willard's own impression of himself has mutated a hell of a lot faster than anyone would have imagined a few months ago. We are truly living in a post-modern age of political rhetoric. Romney has a massive right-wing orchestra to blow hard on every note that passes his lips. He makes a claim, and it gets chorused incessantly by FoxNews, Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, and countless others like them to millions of Americans. Together they create such a storm surge of bullshit that it pushes far inland to where the mainstream corporate media lives. They who spend most of their time trying to disprove the canard that they are radical leftists feel compelled to report on whatever's being tossed up,

There is a town.

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Well it's been a while. Time to open up the old mailbag, right? Right, then, right! Here's a little missive from alert listener Ozymandius Lake in southern Nevada, somewhere near the Arizona border. ("No fixed address" is a strange name for a street, but anyway...)   Dear ignorant buggers, It is manifestly obvious to me, Ozymandius Lake, that you people are a bunch of frauds. Stinking, lousy frauds! I may have no fixed address, but that doesn't mean I'm gullible. You don't live in the Cheney Hammer Mill! That place was knocked down decades ago. And even if it hadn't been, it was hardly large enough to accommodate everything that you claim happens there. And that Rick Perry album you're producing - there ain't no such thing. I've been living in these bottoms for nigh onto twenty years, and I ain't never seen no Rick Perry album. Yours respectfully, O.L. Well, Ozymandius - taking your last comment first - I would have t

Everything he bakes.

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Coming down to the wire, here. A little more than two weeks to the general election and it's going to be a nail biter. Thing is, it shouldn't even be close, but it very likely will be. And that's not good news for the 47%. Or the 99%. Because we all stand to be screwed big time if it goes the wrong way. Right now, Mitt Romney is running around the country like the freaking Candyman, promising everyone everything they want with zero cost. We'll cut your taxes twenty percent and you'll get to keep all of your deductions! We'll make sure rich people pay the same percentage (key term) of taxes that they pay now! All of you middle class folks will be able to deduct 18%, no, 25%, no, 40% of your taxable income! Pick a number! We'll do all that, raise the military budget a trillion dollars, and reduce the deficit at the same time! I'll create 12 million jobs! No rain ever again ... unless, of course, you like rain! It is often said that incumbency has its

Hello, yes.

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Knee deep in other matters, my friend. That's about all I can tell you. Thanks. Hope the ankle trouble gets better. (click!) Oh, hi. Just in the midst of blowing someone off... I mean, ending a phone call somewhat abruptly. Just been one of those weeks. Can't find time to do anything, including this blog. Shoo-wee. Busy, busy, busy. What other meaningless chatter can I share? Big Green news: Matt and I are still mixing cousin Rick's new album. Mixed another song last night. These will be finished versions of some of the numbers we featured on the podcast over the last year. (Hey, collect them all!) We've done about half a dozen as of this week. So it goes. Recorded another episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN's now near-monthly feature, Mr. Ned, a politically charged and wholly insensitive dramatization of the adventures of Willard "Mitt" Romney's dressage horse, on the model of 60s sit-com "Mr. Ed" - everything from bad scripts to low product

Bite back the bad news.

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I'm not going to say much about politics this week. Just bracketed with work, school, more work, etc. A few quick comments and I'm out - sorry for the lameness. Watched the Biden / Ryan matchup. My thought about presidential and vice presidential debates is that you tend to feel the person you agree with was the winner. Only makes sense, right? This was a much easier contest to watch than the last one, I must say, but it retained one of the central themes of the presidential debate: Romney/Ryan does not want to talk specifics about anything, and are now in full flight from their own positions. The purported "numbers guy" seems very reluctant to use any when it comes to talking about their tax plan. They are planning to cut marginal tax rates to 20% across the board, while increasing military spending something like a trillion dollars or more above current spending levels. Ryan was claiming that this can be balanced by closing loopholes on upper income earners. Hor

Distinct possibilities.

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The trouble with doing liner notes is that, damn it, there aren't any liners nowadays. Nothing to put the notes on. Are you getting all this? Great. Just dictating my thoughts to Marvin (my personal robot assistant). What else are PRA's for anyway if not taking dictation? I had a dictating machine once, but it went off one cay and started an authoritarian government in the Philippines ... so now I've got Marvin. Sounds like a foot disease. (Don't tell Marvin I said that. Gratefully, he's not programmed to read blogs.) What am I dictating to said personal robot assistant? Just incidental liner notes on our upcoming album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Yes, I know, this is billed to be an album by Cousin Rick Perry, for Cousin Rick Perry, featuring Cousin Rick Perry. That is all true. But it is also the next Big Green album, and damn it, it needs liner notes like carter needs liver pills. (Ask your grandfather, kid.) This is a complicated task, so it is t

Resolved.

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You've heard enough about the debate, I know. Now hear it from me. I will dispense with my usual grouse about these not being actual debates - no proposition advanced or opposed, no rules of order, etc. Let us concede that they are essentially dueling press conferences. The salient fact is, I tuned in to watch a debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney, and neither of those two men showed up. Obama was taciturn and seemingly unaware that he was in front of a national television audience of 68 million, his head featured in an inset box practically the whole ninety minutes. (I felt like yelling, "He's over there, Barry! Stop doing your homework!") And Romney. Has a man ever run farther or faster from his own proposals? Can conservatives truly celebrate the candidate they saw on Wednesday night? Just a few small points: Romney: "I don’t want to cut our commitment to education" Okay, aside from funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I

Deafening me with science.

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A little louder. Little louder still. Forget headroom! We like our albums LOUD. Turn it up just as LOUD as you can. What? Leave the room? In the middle of a mix? Okay, well that 's discouraging. Here we are at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home in upstate New York, mixing our ... I mean, cousin Rick's new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick , and I'm just discovering now that I am a lousy engineer. Who know (aside from everyone who listens to my work)? Thank the god of your choice that I have Matt Perry to work with, a.k.a. "Mr. Ears" himself. No, that's not because he wears Spock-like ear extensions. I'm not saying he doesn't, mind you ... I'm just saying that's not the reason for the moniker. Though after being summarily ejected from our mixing session due to excessive loudness, I'm thinking about calling him "Mr. Mouth" from now on. Not sure how Matt can mix an album with his ears ringing, having

Week that was.

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A lot of campaign noise this week. The various cable networks are completely possessed by the elections at this point. So.... I'll try to talk about something other than the presidential race this week, just to give you a break. Let's see how far I get. To bomb or not to bomb. This week an old acquaintance posted an image on Facebook of Benjamin Netanyahu holding up that cartoon-like image of a bomb with a lit fuse, with the hilarious comment, "Apparently Iran is run by Boris Badinoff". What's not funny is that we're still talking about this, without considering the consequences, once again. Netanyahu is channeling Bush/Cheney 2003, talking about the most dangerous regimes gaining possession of the most destructive weapons. We have seen this movie before, folks. If Bibi wants war, let him be at the head of the line. Another volunteer for the front! Boston Klan rally. I'm sure some of you saw that group of senate staffers from Scott Brown's office

Sing, Rick, sing!

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Turn which knob again? That one? I already turned that one, for crying out loud. Turn it again? Shut the front door! All these knobs, all these switches... Hey, that's a good idea for a song. All of these knobs, all of these switches, keep this up and you'll need stitches, uh-huh. Okay... not a good idea for a song. I'm getting punchy, and small wonder. Matt and I are hip deep in mixing Rick Perry's new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick ... being a collection of songs that arose from some strange sensory phenomena our dear cousin experienced over the past year. You know how when sometimes you have a little too much to drink or a bit too much .... well, whatever, and the world around you gets all fuzzy and weird, and then the next day you find yourself freighted with all these unexplainable memories of odd behavior, like something your fevered mind cooked up in a dream? Well.... Rick wrote some songs about that. We've been putting rough mixes of thes

Soothsaying.

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The trouble with writing blog posts at the end of a week is that, more often than not, you find yourself on the wrong end of the news cycle, when every blogger and talking head has had more than his/her say. So what the hell - I'm going to comment ever so briefly on a few things and then be quiet for a stretch of days. You're welcome. Embassy attacks. Been watching the awful scenes from overseas. Trouble is, it's always that way for ordinary people in many of those countries. Think of what life is like in Iraq still, with the economy and infrastructure still in a shambles and bombs going off regularly, killing people at random in large numbers. We almost don't even give it any notice unless the death toll reaches north of fifty or so. And yet, I tune in to Talk of the Nation and get to hear Fouad Ajami, formerly known as George W. Bush's favorite Arab and a strong advocate of the Iraq invasion, talking about what Arab peoples need to do to join the community of c

Jupiter rising.

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Great red what ? Jesus christmas, I don't have time for that. I'm trying to stay focused on the Mars mission. Then there's Voyager, all alone out there at the edge of the solar system already... whoops. Someone's reading this. Look busy! Hi, friend(s). You may wonder what I'm rambling about. Though probably not, if you've visited this blog before. We run on and on about pretty much anything that flows into our heads. Hell, I was looking at a pizza menu the other day that featured deep-fried Oreos. But does anyone want to hear about it? God no. So we're going to talk about something more interesting today .... like Jupiter. (The planet, not the derivative Roman god.) The other day some massive asteroid supposedly hit Jupiter. I say "supposedly" because, to be perfectly frank, I think this incident is actually the work of our mad science advisor, Mitchington V. S. Macaphee III, M.S.D., C.M.F. (For the curious, his honorifics are short for Doctor

Never forget.

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Anniversaries of 9/11 come and go, it seems, and like most days of remembrance they are not all that memorable in themselves. This past Tuesday (I believe the event actually occurred on a Tuesday, if memory serves) I was up at Syracuse University, walking past a sidewalk medium that held a field of mini-flags, one for each of the victims of the terrorist attacks. A large sign at one end admonished us to "Never Forget." Not a very unusual experience on such an anniversary. I'm sure there are fields of flags all across the country at this time of year. Walking past it, though, it seemed like there were so few of them. They were arranged in a big rectangle, with a large space in the middle, and it looked kind of sparse. Is this what more than 3,000 flags looks like? I think the reason it looked so empty was that there were no flags to represent the hundreds of thousands that have died since that day, and in large part because of that day. The cautionary "Never Forget

Process, process.

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Smallest town in the biggest state. Father Joseph, what would be my fate? So starts this month's anthem of the Hammer Mill. Can't get that tune out of my head, man! This writing finds us chin deep in production for our next album. Imagine Matt and me in a roomful of 1-inch Ampex tape, all spooled out and tangled like Don Knotts had it in his space capsule in The Reluctant Astronaut. Yes, we always aspire to such heights. "Why not the best?" we ask ourselves, and the answer, of course, is obvious. (Go right to the source and ask the horse.) Why do we do this thing over and over again? This "making an album" thing? We're past the age of consent ( well past) and not famous on our home planet. Our best-selling album is welded to the hull of Voyager as it makes its way out of our solar system. (We sold one copy to NASA. They bought it because it features a lead vocal by the late Kurt Waldheim.) The fact is, we are driven. When Big Green first rose out of

After party.

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Just some random thoughts on the major party conventions, now that they're over. Don't have a lot of time to write this, so it's going to be... well, random. Tale of Two Crackers. Bill Clinton's big speech on Wednesday night capped what seems to me like a political rehabilitation of monumental proportions. At some point, everybody started loving Bill Clinton, and he has become a major statesman ... or as close to that as you can come in this age. It wasn't terribly surprising to see this process happen with Ronald Reagan, who - despite having a spotty popularity rating during his presidency - the media always portrayed as wildly popular, and around whom an image-enhancement industry of sorts has been at work since his departure. But Clinton? Does anyone remember how denigrated he was throughout his presidency? I suppose people have gradually come to the realization that things weren't so bad in the 1990s ... since everything since then has pretty generally su

Mis takes.

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All I've got is a three and a deuce. You've got queens? Christ almighty, Mitch. What do you have, a printing press over there? Isn't that the third hand like that you've.... Oh, wait a minute, I have to get to work here... Hi, everyone. It is I, Joe Perry of Big Green. No, not Joe Perry of Aerosmith. The other Joe Perry. And on behalf of the other members of Big Green, as well as assorted denizens of their entourage, I have been asked to make the following statement. This is NOT a test. This is an ACTUAL OFFICIAL STATEMENT from the band Big Green. Ahem . The founding members of Big Green, Joseph M. Perry and Matthew J. Perry, hereby disavow and deny any connection, either familial or professional, with the group known as The Band Perry. Any claims made by any person or persons suggesting such a connection are patently false and possibly malicious. Big Green shall henceforth neither confirm nor deny any such claims, as the members feel that this statement is suffic