Hammer Mill Days

T’was the night before Wednesday, and all through the house not a minion was haunting, not even the louse … who lives upstairs. And this isn’t a house, it’s a freaking mill. Anything else? Hah. So much for seasonal poetry. Not my best effort, I’m afraid. Hope all is well in your part of the country at this festive time of year. Did racist uncle Bob come up from Montgomery County? Did he break the electric blinds in the dining room again? Thought so. He does that every year , for crying out loud. Then he starts crying out loud. And your pretty little Christmas goes up in flames. Not a sound around the holiday table; just the ticking of the grandfather clock. The ticking! THE TICKING! Whoa, THAT took a dark turn. My apologies. It’s kind of a subdued Christmas around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill this year. Sure, we stand at the ready to fill 20th anniversary orders for our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas , a space odyssey. We’re anticipating order #1 … any day,...

I should start this post with the standard disclaimer that I am not an economist. Inasmuch as this is a nominally free country, at present, I am going to opine on one of the central issues in the Democratic primary debate – the idea of instituting a wealth tax. Advocated in some form by both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, taxing wealth is not a new idea by any means. Chris Hayes’s recent conversation with Gabriel Zucman gives a really good overview of the question, so if you want to hear someone knowledgeable discuss the merits of instituting a wealth tax in the United States, by all means give that a listen. For now, here’s my once-over-lightly. right in time for the holiday season. First, while this idea is remarkably popular, there is a lot of howling on the part of articulate opinion over it. If I were to guess, I would say that the reason may be simply that virtually everyone you see on television has some magnitude of wealth in the form of stocks, property, ...

On the first day of something my something gave to me … something, something, something, blah, blah blah blah blah, five golden … things ! Arrgh. Leave us face it. For a band that began its recording career with what was ostensibly a Christmas album, we are terrible at remembering even the most oft-repeated holiday songs. Someone – I think it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant) – once suggested caroling around the neighborhood on Christmas eve, hoping for some charitable cast-offs and crusts of festive breads, but when you glom over too many lyrics, you lose credibility as a caroler and instead of handing foodstuffs to you, your audiences tend to throw them at you with some force. Personally, when it comes to seasonal pastimes, I prefer the ones that don’t involve serious festive injuries and having steaming vats of hot holiday cheer poured on us from second-story windows. Call me Scrooge. We don’t have any really strong holiday traditions. Probably the most endu...

Impeachment is now officially under way. That’s not what I’ll write about today, however, because you are most likely hearing about that absolutely everywhere else, and I have little or nothing to add to what’s being said elsewhere. Today I’ll opine on the career and slime trail of former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose evident losing battle with dementia is being televised nightly. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people ask, what happened to Rudy? The answer is simple: nothing. Like Trump, he’s just as nasty as he ever was, only older and more scrambled. Because of the nature and the timing of the 9/11 attacks, many people remember Giuliani fondly as “America’s Mayor”, I think mostly because he didn’t run up the street screaming when the towers fell. What he was then, of course, was a failed mayor at the end of his term, a man with the blood of many people of color on his hands, and an immensely corruptible individual whom Jimmy Breslin once famously described...

No, we’re not doing that this year. Why? Because I said so, damn it. Last year it was a freaking disaster, and I’m not going through THAT again. Right, now … where were we? Oh, right … penning another blog post. Yes, friends, our longtime companion here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, antimatter Lincoln, was making a crazy suggestion, and I just had to shut it down. Yes, we live with a mad scientist. Yes, he does turn the gravity on an off occasionally just for fun. Yes, I do have permanent injuries that resulted from that kind of horseplay, and rightfully so. But there’s a point at which even people as tolerant as the members of Big Green have to draw a line, and this is it. NO SECRET SANTA. PERIOD. I mean, I don’t know why people do stuff like that, let alone why someone who is the anti-matter doppelganger of perhaps our greatest president would want to indulge in such a bankrupt and troubling holiday tradition. Now if Anti-Lincoln were Anti-Buchanan or Anti-J...

Last week, Attorney General William Barr gave an address to a gathering of police at an awards ceremony held by the Justice Department. Much was made, and rightfully so, of his comments about “communities” that do not show enough respect for law enforcement possibly finding themselves “without the police protection they need.” This is a remarkably lawless comment by the nation’s chief law enforcement officer – police are sworn to protect the communities they serve, regardless of their political views, attitudes, etc. But what’s even more troubling is Barr’s lead-up to these comments, which I’ve only seen reported in any detail on by the Majority Report . He began with a long rant about the fabled widespread vitriol and contempt shown to veterans returning from the Vietnam war, and how the public sentiment about members of the military turned around during the Gulf War, when Barr was serving in the first Bush Administration. His point with respect to policing was that of...

No, you’re not on my list, and for one very good reason: I don’t have a freaking list. I can see about getting you on Anti-Lincoln’s list, but I don’t think that’s the kind of list you want to be included on, if you know what I mean. A word to the wise. Yes, I’m afraid it’s that time of year again, friends. And once again I have to explain to Marvin (my personal robot assistant) how the world of humans works. You’d think after twenty years he would have some of this stuff encoded into his memory banks, but no … every holiday season it’s human nature 101 and elements of capitalism. What the hell am I, anyway, a freaking community college for robots? Hey …. not a bad idea, really. We’ve got the space, and at least a couple of spare power strips they can plug into. We could call it Robotech, order some jerseys and pennants and …. WHAT AM I SAYING? Christmas is always confusing, right? For one thing, it’s a consumer frenzy, at least for half of the population. For the re...

The Democratic race for president is one candidate smaller today than it was a couple of days ago. Kamala Harris dropped out this week, and it took about five minutes for the talking heads in the corporate media to attribute the failure of her campaign to the push for Medicare for All. By Wednesday morning, Claire McCaskill, failed candidate for senate, was on Morning Joe taking shots at M4A as a far-left government takeover of insurance, amounting to some kind of expropriation from hardworking Americans. They’re taking our corporate insurance away! People from the heartland won’t like this! Let’s think for a moment of what would be taken away. I have one of those insurance policies people like McCaskill and Scarborough think so highly of. (I’m sure they have nothing like it, by the way.) My plan is what used to be termed a “Cadillac plan”, not because the benefits are so generous but because my employer pays 80% of my premiums. Even so, the plan costs me thousands of d...

I made a list of important things to include on the blog post. Now where did I leave it? What's that? I used the back of it for a grocery list then threw it away? Right, well ... they weren't THAT important. As is apropos of the season, here at Big Green, there is a lot to be thankful for. Sure, we may seem like just another cynical rock band, iconoclasts, always questioning authority, taking the road not taken, bending pretzels the wrong way, riding bicycles with square wheels, etc. But that doesn't mean we're ungrateful. Hell no! I'm thankful for the roof over our heads. At least the parts that don't let the rain in. After all, we spent a good portion of the year in the potting shed, so being back in our own squat feels like a million bucks, even if it leaks from time to time. I'm thankful for having a personal robot assistant. Hey, not everyone can say that, right? Not only do I have the full and (somewhat) able assistance of Marvin (my personal rob...

I want to open this week with a message to my fellow leftists. I know, some of you right now are probably saying, "Okay, boomer ... ", but hear me out. For the more deeply committed among you, the upcoming presidential race is probably not the most important item on the agenda, but for those who plan on participating in the Democratic party primaries and caucuses, I have one modest caution: Don't rip a new asshole into every candidate other than Bernie (whom I personally support). Many of us who are participating in electoral politics want Bernie to win, but that goal is in the hands of the voters. If we out-organize and out-vote all of the other candidates, we can win ... but losing is a possibility, and given that eventuality we would still need to beat Trump in November ... regardless of who wins the Democratic party nomination for president. The fact is, achieving top policy priorities like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal will be tremendously difficult no...

Well, it's, I don't know, the album's China anniversary. That makes it sound like we're traveling to Beijing. Not that I wouldn't, if luncheon is provided ... but I must be fed, or I remain at home. Yes, who can believe it, folks ... it's been 20 years since the release of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas , or at least I think it is. Totally makes sense, in a way. After all, twenty years ago was the year two thousand, so that's when we would have done it, pursuant to our obsession with accuracy. Hah! As if! We dropped the album at some weird ass time to accommodate the disc production schedule. They were taking their time about whittling those CDs. I know it's painstaking work, but really .... six weeks? Outrageous. Well, our Indonesian sweat shop finally churned out the product, weeks after Christmas. Picture rows and rows of workers, chipping away at blocks of plastic, knocking off everything that doesn't look like a CD, then hand-paint...

It would be hard to overstate the sheer joy being felt by our corporate media over the last couple of weeks. It reminds me of those times when there's three major stories and a hurricane. They are never so happy as when the news machine is firing on all cylinders, and that is certainly what's happening now - impeachment hearings, international upheaval, Democratic debates. Lots and lots of content, and very little effort needed to push it out. So here I am, sitting in front of the television on debate night, watching the long wind-up led by erstwhile nightly news anchor Brian Williams, basking in the lights, moderating a conversation between failed Senate re-elect candidate Claire McCaskill, former Howard Schultz vendor Steve Schmidt, perennial talk show host Joy Ann Reid, and Chris Hayes, smartest man on TV. The ten candidates include a billionaire who basically bought his way onto this stage. Cautionary comments from Schmidt and McCaskill counseling centrism. Hoo boy. F...

Where's my great American songbook? I know I left it around here somewhere. What's that you say, Marvin (my personal robot assistant)? There's no such thing? That's just a metaphor for everything written before nineteen sixty? Okay, gotcha. Look at me, for chrissake. I'm turning the Hammer Mill upside down looking for something that doesn't even exist outside of our tiny little minds. No, there is no Great American Songbook per se, though I have had "fake" books over the years - the Boston book, the Real book, the Real book with lyrics, etc., all illegal as hell. Strange thing to be declared contraband, but you had to have them .... even if you just played in a contraband. (A band that plays everything backwards, that is.) Seriously, fake books were an essential survival tool in the world of itinerant musicians. You may well ask why I would need a compendium of old songs. And well you may. Keep asking - eventually I'll find an answer. Yes, well...

I haven't been following the Democratic primary contest very much on this blog, as it receives so much coverage elsewhere it seems massively redundant for me to comment on it as well. When it becomes a substantive policy discussion, however, it certainly warrants comment. When Elizabeth Warren released the explanatory document on her version of Medicare for All (M4A), it was greeted with derision by supporters of the more "moderate" candidates. Morning Joe , of course, rolled out their resident fiscal policy expert Steve Rattner, who deployed a series of charts and graphs that demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt the very thing that the recent George Mason University study made clear: health care in America is expensive. Rattner used a pie chart to show what portions of total health care cost would be picked up by M4A, then a line graph to illustrate how much higher federal spending would be if such a plan were implemented. He was attempting to make the point that...

Where did I put that bucket? Is that mine you're using? Well, give it back, damn it. Go find another one to carry your golf balls around in. Jesus H. Christmas. Yes, greetings from the one-man bucket brigade here at the abandoned and partially submerged Cheney Hammer Mill. Perhaps you heard about all the flooding we got here in upstate New York after that Halloween storm? Well, the old water kept on rising in our neck of the woods, and it ain't pretty. Trouble is, back when they built these old mills, they located them close to the water for a variety of reasons. Practical, yes .... back then. Now it's a positive nuisance! The canal behind the Hammer Mill sloshed over in the first 24 hours, and we've been flapping around in scuba flippers ever since. Why am I bailing this place out alone? Because everyone else, well ... bailed , frankly. Can't blame them - this sucks. They're all off to higher ground, except for Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who has b...

It's not hard to see how Donald Trump's presidency could be good for the war caucus that encompasses parts of both parties. The deep neocon types oppose some of Trump's foreign policy decisions, thereby endearing themselves to centrist Democrats who are always eager to make new friends (on the right). Then if a Democrat wins the presidency next year, the neocons would hope, I'm sure, to ride into Washington with her or him. There are two, maybe three Democratic presidential candidates who would say no, but the others ... I'm not so sure. I have no doubt, though, that some of them would serve as a tunnel back to power for the hyper interventionists. That's not to say that Trump represents any alternative to an imperial foreign policy. A recent Nation editorial by Bob Borosage describes Trump's betrayal of the Kurds in Syria as giving peace a bad name - this is a fair point, but the Trump foreign policy bears very little resemblance to anything the anti-wa...

What are you talking about? I was very careful in my deliberations about this get up. If someone's feathers get ruffled, well ... it's not on me, man. Folks got to just calm down. Yeah, it's Halloween again, everyone. Kind of a big holiday around these parts. Why, I've known these quiet suburban moms and dads to take their kids out in gale force winds, forcing them against the elements to have a good time, damn it. That's how memories are made, my friends. Here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, we try to make this old barn of a place seem inviting. We can't afford pumpkins or corn stalks, of course, so we just slip the mansized tuber a fiver and ask him to stand by the front door with a citronella torch. He looks, uh, kind of autumnal ... if you squint. Now, I'm not a big one for dress-up, as you know. Never liked it, never. That said, I did put on some old jeans and borrowed one of those blue denim shirts, then combed my hair forward and put on a fa...

ISIS has lost its leader. So ... that's that? When are the leaders of my country going to work this decentralized model of resistance out? It's not that these are leaderless movements per se. Al-Baghdadi was a founder and a leader of his grisly movement. But the relationship between his organization and the broader base of jihadists across the region and around the globe is loose at best. As Ted Rall once put it, it's a bit like the relationship between a Rolling Stones tribute band and the Rolling Stones themselves. And like Warren Zevon's Roland, cutting off the head won't kill it: The eternal Thompson gunner still wanders through the night Now it's ten years later, but he still puts up a fight In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley ... I feel somewhat the same way about the Trump presidency. Getting Trump out of office is not going to be some kind of magic bullet. I keep hearing pundits talk about people wanting to return to normal, go b...

I don't remember this room being this cramped. For crying out loud, what did they do to this place? Where's my plastic furniture? I was weeks collecting that bedroom set! Oh well ... there's bound to be a few glitches in any complex negotiation. The important thing is, we're back, baby! We've won the right to squat in our beloved Cheney Hammer Mill once again. And when I say "beloved", well ... that's a relative term. Next to the potting shed we've been crammed into all summer, the mill is a veritable palace. Sure, we have to share it with lunatics, but even that's not unprecedented. (Just take a look through our back pages and you'll see what I'm talking about.) All that said, there are a few restrictions on what we're going to be able to do as residents of the mill from here on out. Maybe it was a mistake to deputize Anti-Lincoln as our chief negotiator with the crazy upstairs neighbors. Our main thought was that he was, after...

There's no question but that Donald Trump is the worst president in my lifetime, and I'm fairly certain he's a serious contender for the worst president in American history. In most of the surveys I've seen, that position is held by pre-Civil War POTUS James Buchanan (1857 - 1861), but I think Buchanan's one distinction is under serious threat ... he may be surging to second worst by the end of Trump's current term. Of course, Trump doesn't see it that way. His ranging, incoherent cabinet meeting this past Monday gave him the opportunity to crow about the greatest economy in American history, his single-handed defeat of ISIS, his deal-making acumen, and so on. Sure, he got Turkey mixed up with Iraq at one point, but who's counting? He claims to be fulfilling a promise to bring American troops home, and one wishes that were true, but of course this claim - like everything else that comes out of his festering gob - is a cheap, transparent lie that wouldn...

Here's my counter offer. You can use the counter any time you want, even when we're having brunch in the kitchen on alternate Sundays, as per our agreement, volume 3, chapter 5, subsection 4, paragraph 2 (see also sources in footnote 845). Now what do you say? Yeah, here we are, making a deal with the devil, folks. Yes, I'm talking about those crazy squatters who invaded and occupied the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our makeshift home, sometime during the summer, consigning us and our various hangers-on to the potting shed in the courtyard. We're attempting to reach some understanding with them, but it's a bit more complicated than I had imagined. Apparently one of these yahoos is a contract lawyer. Doesn't look it. Anyway, our draft agreement for the return of Big Green to the Cheney Hammer Mill is ... well, it's thick as your ass, maybe thicker. Lots of wherefores and what-have-you's, which is fine, because what have we right now but big fat noth...

Yes, I watched the Democratic presidential debate on CNN this past week, god help me. The best thing I can say about it is that CNN dropped the dramatic WWF candidate intro segment and went straight into the questions. That said, the fact that there were twelve candidates on stage made the event a ridiculous parody of an actual debate. Candidates are given 75 seconds to respond to a question, and 45 seconds for rebuttals. It is simply impossible to grapple with the complex issues facing our nation in any meaningful way within those time constraints. The format drives a kind of Twitter-like approach to discourse, complete with the trolling. Seventy-five seconds is something like 125 words. Try talking a nation out of decades of for-profit healthcare or a century of oil dependence in that little time. It's a format that greatly favors the status quo. And the status quo had many defenders last night. As was predicted the previous week by talking heads and broadcast journalists, u...

Why does it rattle so much? Is that the low end putting out all that noise? Hmmmm ... well, there's only one thing for it. Grease. Lots of grease. Oh, hi. As is so often my affectation, I will behave as if you just came upon me in a coffee shop or squatting down on the curbside, changing a flat tire. Of course, neither of those things is true in this particular universe, but sometimes we like to act as though we're interacting on a more personal level and not merely connecting via that series of tubes known as the internet. Okay ... that's a long way of saying, welcome, once again, to Hammer Mill Days, the Big Green blog, where we're liable to burn half a column just saying hi. Uh ... hi. We're at the mixing stage of our current project. What project is that, you may ask? (And well you may.) It's the next musical episode of Ned Trek, of course, and we've been working on a raft of eight songs designed to keep the plot moving forward. Matt and I have been...

It's probably best for me to start by saying that I was always against U.S. military involvement in the Syrian civil war - this was the case during the Obama administration and it remains the case now. But because our troops have been there in numbers exceeding 1,000 for years now, and that we have worked them into Syria's complex web of security guarantees, alliances, and bitter enmities, it seems only right that we should consider the consequences of whatever decisions we make, whether it means pulling troops out or putting more in. This is a situation in which every power is in it for its own gain, and that includes the United States. That's why the goddam war is still going on ... and thanks to Trump this week, it's likely to move into a new and more deadly phase. The Syrian Kurds, who made the mistake of fighting for us as part of the conflict in their country, are now in the crosshairs of a massive military operation by Turkey - an incursion into northern Syria ...

Hey, wait ... isn't it my turn? No? What the hell - you just had it. I'm not going to listen to another of your drunken yarns, you ne'er do well. Jesus, what a stupid tradition. Let's start over. Oh, hi. Well, since we're living so close to the ground these days, an almost traditional life style you might say, we've decided to take on some of the old practices, just to keep in step with our new way of living. Not sure what ancient peoples dwelt in potting sheds ... perhaps there was a Potsylvania after all. (Jay Ward may have been onto something!) Nevertheless, we thought it might make the time go by a bit faster to appropriate some old traditions that we'd seen on TV at some point. One was the talking stick. You know how it works, right? Whoever has the stick can speak to the group, tell a tale, reveal a secret, cop to a fault or instance of wrongdoing, etc. Then they pass it along. Or sometimes they don't, and you have to grab it from their ass. Go...

I don't read a lot of books these days, given my lack of personal time, but right now I'm reading a book I think every American should read. It's called Kill Anything That Moves , by Nick Turse, it's a few years old (maybe five or six), and it lays out the systematic slaughter of the U.S. war in Vietnam in sickening detail. Meticulously researched and documented, this book is a really useful guide to archival sources on what was certainly one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century and one that the United States has never come to terms with. Here is a brief excerpt that describes what was done in the American effort to pacify the Binh Dinh region of South Vietnam in 1966: During the six weeks of [Operation] Masher/White Wing, from late January to early March 1966, the 1st Cavalry Division fired 133,191 artillery rounds in to Binh Din's heavily populated An Lao Valley and Bong Son Plain. The navy added 3,213 rounds from its ships. The air force launched ...

Shore it up, boys. Let's keep the roof on this thing. Sure, it used to be the floor, but when something's keeping the rain off your head, it's a roof. Unless it's a hood ... or an umbrella. Never mind. Hey, well, here we are again, man. Trying to keep a broken home together. I don't mean that daddy left and ain't coming back (even though that's roughly true); I mean we're fixing a hole where the rain came in ... and it's the size of the freaking roof. We're borrowing wood from the floor to shore up the roof. We're borrowing planks from the south wall to block up the gaping hole in the north wall. This is like the fabled Ship of Theseus. This isn't a home ... it's a philosophical paradox! Is it the same potting shed as when we moved here? Only your logic professor can say for certain. Sure, sometimes the demands of home ownership (or home occupancy) keep us from our real work, the work we were put here to do. And that's a good ...

Like so many weeks during the Trump era, this one has been dizzying. It started with the massive climate change resistance marches led by Greta Thunberg and other young people, and it's ending with what appears to be the most brazen example yet of Donald Trump self-dealing in the conduct of his office. Whoa, momma ... it's like drinking from a fire hose .... again. Let me start with these amazing young climate activists. I have to say, if anyone is going to be able to save our sorry asses, it's these folks .... and I don't mean that we should sit back, fold our arms, and wait for them to deliver us from climate catastrophe. I mean that their activism can be the catalyst for real change. It is impossible to argue with people who will inevitably inherit the world that we are so actively wrecking. Their outrage is justified, and we should follow their lead. There have been times when I have fallen into resignation on this issue, I will admit, but they give me reason to r...

I don't know - what do you think? It's been a few weeks. Actually longer. Starting to lose track. When you've been at sea as long as we have, you forget what the shore looks like. Though if memory serves, it sure looks like shit. Ah, forgive me. You caught me in the midst of my musings. My mind tends to wander as I squat here in the humble potting shed that sits in the courtyard of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our erstwhile squat-house now under occupation by hostile neighbors. (See what I mean? I can't even write short sentences anymore.) Living here offers an opportunity to reflect on where we've been and where we're going. Where we've been is nowhere. Where we're going is, who the hell knows. And the midpoint between nowhere and who the hell knows is ... I don't know, fuck-all? Something nicer? For some reason, this week we were talking about whether or not Big Green would do another album. After all, our last release was in 2013, when we...

All right, so, I watched most of the debate last week, and the thing I came away with was something like what Anand Giridharadas said the weekend after - that I had watched what should amount to Joe Biden's retirement party. The odd thing about that phenomenon is that almost no one on mainstream television appears to agree with that. In fact, some of the usual pundits were saying that this was Biden's best night of the three debates. I have to scratch my head when I hear this stuff - did they see the same show I saw? Or is it just that they have lowered the performance bar for Biden to such an extent that he basically can do no wrong. That is not the Biden I saw. His worst moment, namely his response to the question about the legacy of slavery in America, was aptly dissected by the Majority Report crew, who I think nailed it on the head. In his halting way, Biden began his response by talking about his fight against segregation, then pivoted quickly, recalling that this was a...

Hmmmm. That looks like light coming in. Not necessarily a bad thing, except that's a wall, not a window. So, I don't know... somewhat problematic. Okay, it turns out that a potting shed is not the best place to hide during a hurricane or other extreme weather event. Who knew? Seemed sturdy enough when we moved in. I know you're used to hearing us complain about nearly everything, but we had very few complaints about the shed, aside from the fact that there was no screen for the fireplace. Our landlord's response? "Run for your lives! The potting shed doesn't HAVE a fireplace!" Yesterday the wind started kicking up and water came pouring down from the heavens like one of those super soaker shower heads. (Actually the shower head is like the rain, but never mind.) Then the entire structure started to sway lazily in the wind. Far from keeping the weather out, the shed was practically inviting it in, and frankly, this shed isn't big enough for me and s...

Bolton's gone. We survived Bolton. That's something to celebrate, at least. When Trump hired him, I honestly didn't see how we would avoid a precipitous war with Iran, but thus far it hasn't happened and now Johnny Mustache has died and gone to Fox. Good riddance. Now that I've got THAT out of my system, just a head's up that I'm going to do another debate night notebook this week. The major Democratic presidential candidates will all be on one stage this time around, and I'll be tapping random stuff into my tablet as they spar. It's either going to be really interesting or the usual bland corporate show we've gotten previously. Really a much stronger chance of the latter, but we'll see. First comment: What the hell corporate network is this debate on? This is the problem with this model of campaign debates. They become proprietary content, and as such, none of the other networks will talk about the details until the program's over. ...

Haven't you finished that symphony yet? Well, get going. You've got a piano concerto to write as well. Don't hurry or anything .... it's due to the publisher on Friday. That's today. Man, some of these deadlines are hard to meet, particularly when you're living in a crowded, leaky potting shed in the courtyard of your former sqauthouse, the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. We're just trying to keep the ship afloat here, folks, and to do so we cannot limit ourselves to any single genre of music. That's why I have Marvin (my personal robot assistant) composing music for hire. This week he's working on modern classical music ... long hair stuff. Marvin knows what that's all about. I plugged a Classical Gas album into his tape drive. With all the disruption, you'd think our mail wouldn't find us, but never underestimate the power of mail carriers to find their target. They dropped us a parcel of letters, postcards, and newsletters as thick a...