Hammer Mill Days

That doesn't sound much like a Sousaphone. What if you cup your hands over your mouth ... like this? Wa-wuh-wa-wuh . How about that? Too much like a muted trombone? Very well. Okay, I admit it ... sometimes it's hard to arrange a song when you've only got two musicians in the room, and one of them is me ... and the other is my brother. (That's brother of the same mother, Matt Perry.) The palette is limited, let us say, and of course Matt can't play guitar and bass at the same time. (I've had more than one talk with him about his shortcomings.) And my keyboarding is, well, mostly confined to piano like objects, organs, etc. We're recording new, mostly very silly songs, and they call for stuff we can't do ourselves. At least, not without some modifications. These are songs for the podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, and more specifically, for our next Ned Trek episode. Matt wanted a sousaphone like sound, so he attempted to make it himself. On one song, I wan...

The right-wing nut-job media machine has really been cranking overtime this past few weeks. One wonders how long the hair-on-fire outrage routine can possibly continue to work for them. When you sound the emergency broadcast system every day, 24 hours a day, doesn't it reduce the effect ... or, at least, the specialness? Maybe not in the context of today's insatiable media culture. Perhaps there is no saturation point for this level of madness. I confess, this Bergdahl-as-a-traitor obsession is simply astounding. Didn't think they would go there, but apparently they have. The man spent five years as a captive of the Taliban, is finally released, and the reactionary pundits (and some of the centrists, as well) have been roasting him and his family alive ever since. This is trial by media, and they keep stoking the flame higher and higher, trotting out retired colonels and former Army comrades of Bergdahl who paint this craven picture of the young man, none of it based on d...