Hammer Mill Days

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...