Hammer Mill Days

Still watching that space? Well, give it up. That was a joke, damn it. Don't take me literally ... that way lies madness. Well, here we are, inching closer to the release date of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick , Big Green's third and perhaps silliest album ever. Fully 21 tracks of pure, unadulterated goofiness, each one performed by what is nominally a completely different combo. We've got the master all set. We've designed the packaging for our limited run of CD-Rs and the graphics for our digital distributors. Now all we have to do is, well, complete the arcane process of acquiring ISRC codes for all of the tracks, manufacturing the discs, doing a run of wax cylinders for those listeners still enamored of that format, and so on. What is the release date? Good question. Ask our corporate label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., a.k.a. Hegephonic. They make all the big foot decisions. (By that I mean, they actually have a sasquatch serving as their Chief...

We made history this week, once again. In a small way, at least, but no insignificant. We apparently (and I have no proof, but it seems likely) convinced our European allies France, Spain, and Portugal to deny flyover permission to the plane carrying Evo Morales, president of Bolivia. In other words, we diverted an aircraft carrying a head of state to something other than its intended destination, not because of an emergency, but because we suspected that whistleblower Edward Snowden had somehow been secreted aboard the flight in an effort to offer him asylum. That was not the case, of course. Not that it would have been ample justification for diverting the Bolivian equivalent of Air Force One, but then ... since when does the U.S. need justification to do anything to a nation as powerless as Bolivia? The reaction from South America has not been positive, as one might expect. Leaders from Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, and other countries have gathered in solidarity with Morales (wh...