Hammer Mill Days

How does this sound for a robot voice? "I am not a crook!" What? Well, yes, that IS my Nixon voice, but I'm doing a Nixon robot, remember? How is that supposed to sound, for crying out loud? Oh, hello out there in Real Worldia. No, this isn't another pointless argument about some instrument none of us plays. We're just getting ready to record another episode of our Star Trek parody, Ned Trek, now in its 19th episode, featured on our monthly (or near-monthly, at least) podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN. Not to give away any trade secrets, but I do the voice of the Nixon android, an automaton who holds the entire personal and political history of Richard Milhous Nixon in his memory banks. Likes a good stiff drink every once in a while, Nixon does. Don't know if you've heard the show, but assuming you haven't, I'll give you some idea of what it's all about. We take an episode or two of the original Star Trek series and mash it up, replacing the main...

This past week the president announced the deployment of 300 "military advisers" to Iraq in an effort to address concerns about recent territorial gains by the radical Sunni group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This sparked outrage on the part of the coterie of statist reactionaries (not "conservatives" in any way) who started the 2003 Iraq invasion, all of whom wish to turn back the clock to the days when they had some say over what battalion of other people's children may be sent to what hell-hole. Of course, they already had their hair on fire about Obama's foreign policy, particularly with regard to the Middle East. Once again, the alarm bell is cranked up to eleven ... like it was for the capture of the Benghazi jihadist, and for the the Bergdahl deal, and for pretty much every thing that happens anywhere, every day of the week. Not sure why we should listen to people like Dan Senor, or John McCain, or Bill Kristol, or anyone else still on te...

Not much I can add to that, brother. How about another piano? No, no ... not a different individual piano instrument , I mean another piano PART! Holy Jebus! Oh, hi. Sorry about my outburst there. No, I wasn't having an argument with my illustrious brother Matt, I was just rehearsing for our conversation later on today. I know it may seem strange, but I have to rehearse for just about everything that occurs in my life. Which is even stranger, in fact, because I almost never rehearse for gigs. In fact, you might describe me as downright hostile to the idea. (As a friend once famously said, "Rehearsal is just a crutch for cats who can't blow.") Now I should say here, no one has ever accused Big Green of not blowing. That just never has been part of our DNA. Granted, we have some errant strands in there; some stray genes that make us more susceptible to, say, living in abandoned hammer mills (which, on a rainy day like today, is kind of like living in a water treatme...

Last week I wrote about the P.O.W. Bergdahl and how he and his family were being used as a political football. The other half of the story is about the prisoner trade the Taliban negotiated with our government. The same voices that were denigrating the Bergdahl clan described the traded Guantanamo detainees as a Taliban "dream team" or a set of "MVPs" for the other side in the Afghan war. Setting aside the ridiculousness of the sports analogy, this characterization is as stupid as it is irrelevant. First of all, they were not high-value detainees. They were leadership within the Taliban regime of the 1990s - 2001, yes, but they were not implicated in the deaths of any Americans. Nor were they captured at great cost, as has been suggested by some. Two or more of them turned themselves in; others were turned in by Pakistani intelligence, probably in exchange for some payment. Will they return to "the fight"? Well, that may be, but keeping Guantanamo open ...

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...

Well, I'm back from watering the man-sized tuber. Never thought his personal life decisions would so dramatically affect my schedule, but apparently so. He has to be watered two or three times a day, and it looks like I'm nominated to be his personal gardener. By default. (Well, I can't leave it to anti-Lincoln. He'd set the poor bastard root vegetable on fire!) Anywho, this seems like a good time to talk about our May THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast and what you're likely find lurking inside that largish mp3 file. Here's the rundown: Ned Trek XVIII: Captain Fricassee - This is a riff on the "classic" Star Trek episode "The Enemy Within", in which the captain - in this case, Willard Mittilius Romney - is divided by a transporter malfunction into a good half and a bad half. Our version features a Romney doppelganger that embodies the southern reactionary buried within every conservative candidate for higher office. Gluttony saves the day. Don...