Hammer Mill Days

That thing is way out of tune ... I mean WAY out of tune, dude. Use my phone. No, not my SMART phone ... that Bell Princess phone over in the corner, next to the mansized tuber. The dial tone is a low F#. Just transpose, for chrissake. DIVAS! Yes, you're listening in on another Big Green rehearsal. It's like you're a fly on the wall. In the Cheney Hammer Mill, that makes you inconspicuous .... not because you're so small, but because there are so many flies on the wall, you meld in with the multitude. Anyhow, we're running through a few numbers, putting down tracks, laying in a groove, etc. etc. Sometimes it's hard to keep all of these various stringed instruments in tune with one another, especially when the city cuts off your electricity, your internet connection, your phone service, your water, and your air. (That last cut-off only happens on Type-M planets.) No, we haven't had our electricity cut off this week (yet), but life is still bloody complica...

The start of the Iraq war is back in the news again, and the guy who's reviving the conversation is named Bush. No, not THAT Bush ... the chunky one who used to run Florida (voted craziest state in the Union three years in a row - lookout, Texas!). Jeb Bush stumbled over a couple of questions about whether or not he would have done the same thing his imbecile brother did back in 2003. At first he seemed to suggest that he would have done the same thing, then later backtracked a bit, saying that, knowing what "we" know now, he would have done something different. A little later, he was invoking the name of our dead and injured troops to cover his ass, as his brother so often did Okay, so first of all, "we" knew what we know now then. Brother Bush is just clinging to the mythology spun by his and his brother's advisers. You remember the story - we had all this seemingly reliable intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, supplied by the CIA, that turned ou...

Here we are. Another late Spring arrives in the middle of freaking nowhere. Birds are singing, grass is growing, the underemployed ice cream vendor is driving a superannuated truck up your street, playing "Pop goes the weasel" (or 4 bars of it). Life is good. I don't know if you've ever lived in an abandoned Hammer Mill in upstate New York over the course of the coldest winter anybody can remember. I mean, damn! We were frozen solid, stuck in the ice for five whole months. The bill collectors had to come after us with ice picks. Visitors from Neptune had to go home half way through their stay - THAT'S how cold it was. (How cold was it? Well ... ) So hey ... when a little warm weather comes this way, it's a big deal. Everyone is starting to get into their temperate habits. The mansized tuber has been arranging flower pots. Before you ask, no ... he does not have a green thumb. They are both "suburban titanium". He just plays with clay pots - stack...

Well, it's just been one of those weeks. For some reason, MSNBC has been choosing to spend enormous amounts of airtime on some football scandal (talk about a news dump!), but that notwithstanding, we at Big Green insist on full coverage. Mess with Texas. I imagine you've heard by now that the great state of Texas is under threat of invasion and the imposition of marshal law by a socialist-slave U.S. military. You've heard, that is, if you spend most of your free time on paranoid right-wing nut-job web sites. This fantasy, rooted in the kind of conspiratorial blather that has animated the right since Obama's election and before (remember Ruby Ridge?), is all the more bizarre because it is taking hold in a state that prides itself as being the home of many, many U.S. military personnel. All that flag-waving, and still Governor Greg Abbott feels it necessary to task his national guard with observing the upcoming special forces exercises. Freakish. Amazingly, these peopl...

Jesus, that's god-awful. Turn that shit down, man! What the hell are you listening to, anyway? Some kind of reality show reruns? Oh .... it's our podcast. Nevermind. Okay, so we have this podcast, see? And it kind of sucks, see? But we're proud of it anyway, so that naturally leads me to want to tell you all about the latest episode, hot off the presses here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Let's take a look under the hood, shall we? Item the First: Ned Trek XXIII - Doo-Dah Dancing - This episode of our post-modern satirical space opera (a bizarre-ass mashup of classic Star Trek, Mr. Ed, and the 2012 Presidential election) is loosely based on the 3rd season classic ST episode entitled "Turnabout Intruder", in which Captain Kirk's body is taken over by an ex-girlfriend/scientist - typical season 3 ridiculousness, and perhaps the most asinine episode ever. In this distorted version of that degraded reality, Captain Willard Mittilius Romney is forced ...

When will we stop being surprised when another young black man is dispatched by the police? By "we" I mean, we white people? Freddie Gray is just the latest victim of the New Jim Crow (basically the same as the old one, except a little less rhetorically overt). My initial impression at news of this fresh outrage was, if this had been a lynching in 1951, would any of us doubt who was responsible? This is freaking ridiculous. Sure, I know - investigation of any crime and prosecution of perpetrators is complex and time-consuming, for Christ on a bike - it isn't like they found the guy on the street with a broken neck. He died in police custody. How many interviews does that take? Monday night Baltimore was burning, in places. Tuesday morning, we heard all the usual stuff. Why are they burning their own neighborhoods down? What's the matter with these people? Hey ... they looted a liquor store? Same crap every time this happens. These, incidentally, are not the question...

You know, any other band would be talking about a summer tour right about now. But that's what "normal" bands do. They play in front of actual people and stuff. Big Green? Not so much. Here's the thing about Big Green. We are not a "normal" band. We are a musical collective, a band of brothers, a loose association of critters, a gaggle of organisms, a ... I don't know, something else that implies more than one of us. And weird. The very suggestion of a "summer tour" brings to mind something quite different from what most people picture. We're not rolling into Akron or Missoula, playing in a urine-soaked noise cave, and sleeping on someone's floor. No, sir - typically, we're sleeping in the urine-soaked cave. That cave? It's called the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home. Okay, so we never, ever do normal tours. I'm not saying we never will, but everyone ELSE is saying it, so who am I to argue? No, sir ... whe...