Tag Archives: center of the earth

Level nine.

That’s not a gondola, Mitch. That’s a freaking elevator. Six weeks of screwing around, scraping up all of the coins out of our various seat cushions, and what have we got – an elevator to the center of the Earth. You don’t need an elevator to go there – the gravity will take you!

Right, well, as you can see, we’re grappling with the contradictions that fall out of having a tunnel to the Earth’s core in the basement of your squat house. I’m sure you’ve had days like that. Why is it a tunnel and not a mere hole? Well, it is the intended use of the thing that defines the thing, and it is our intent to use it as a pathway to fame and fortune … or at least, remuneration equal to the cost of a cheap sandwich at the local diner. Big Green doesn’t aim high, people – that’s why we’re looking down a hole to the center of the Earth and seeing opportunity.

And though I may have just read the riot act to Mitch, an elevator like the Giardiniera Twelve isn’t necessarily a bad thing to have when you have a hole of this type in your basement. It might prove to be damned convenient, particularly if some of the subterranean strata call for a closer look. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) can act as the operator – he’s got the right gravitas (or lack of same), and of course he’s been down the hole once already. In fact, it’s thanks to the insta-matic camera Mitch installed in Marvin’s stomach that we have any idea of what’s going on down there. Apparently, quite a lot.

Squx?Just as an example: nine levels down, there’s a cavernous opening that leads into what looks like a geological circus tent. Interestingly, the stalactites look like rhesus monkeys and the stalagmites look like sea turtles. An enterprising young robot assistant might make his or her way down there with a box of paints, go to work, and before you know it you have the Petrified Creatures Museum. Either that or the lawn ornament shop that, purely by chance, was established right next door.

That’s just one level, folks. Lots more where that came from. Get ready to crank up the pit elevator – this band is going down!

Root cellar blues.


Don’t tell me what day it is. No, really – I don’t want to know. Just let me pretend that it’s still Saturday. Yessss…. Saturday….

Oh, man. Typing in my sleep again. Someone should really take this laptop away from me. I’m liable to post ANYTHING while I’m sleeping, even (dare I say it?) the password to Marvin (my personal robot assistant). That’s all you would need to make him do YOUR bidding, however inaccurately. Actually, (*yawn*) his password is a vegetable that starts with “P” followed by the fifth number up from zero. Do your worst. Don’t forget to oil him regularly, and if he asks you to feed him, just ignore it. He fancies himself some kind of humanoid or cyborg, but that’s pretty far from the truth. For chrissake, Mitch Macaphee made him out of bits and spares. Nothing of value in … HEY! STOP KICKING ME, MARVIN! THAT HURTS!!

Word to the wise – he gets kind of ornery sometimes. Or at least since we sent him down that enormous rabbit hole that Mitch Macaphee dug in the flagstone floor of the Cheney Hammer Mill, where we  live. Something happened to Marvin down there… something no human should ever experience. Namely, being stuck in a small air pocket with the man-sized tuber. Ever spend a weekend with a sack of potatoes? I mean, like, when you were a kid, sleeping in the root cellar of your uncle’s farm, or something. Well… whether you have or not, THAT’S the kind of thing Marvin had to get through this past week. Something broke deep inside of him. (I think it might have been a c-clamp, but I won’t be sure until I take him in for service later this month.)

Mitch, thankfully, has given up on his idea to build a radical new transportation system circumventing the surface of the Earth entirely in favor of direct routes through its chewy nougat center. However sound that idea may have seemed, it turned out to be surprisingly impractical. Who knew there were so many obstacles deep beneath the Earth’s crust? I always assumed this was one of those relatively inexpensive planets – you know, the ones that are hollow inside? A hollow chocolate world. No, sir… turns out it’s not. The Earth, you see, is like an enormous malted milk ball, except instead of some kind of hydrogenated artificially-flavored wad of sugar and cornstarch, it’s full of rock and dirt and molten lava. Yeah, man… who knew? Guess I should have paid more attention in school. Let that be a lesson to ALL of you kids out there. STOP READING THIS BLOG! SAVE YOURSELVES WHILE THERE’S STILL TIME!

Well, my eyelids are telling me to sign off. And I never give them an argument… at least not for very long.

Saving something.


It’s not use – that guitar string just isn’t long enough. We could tie two or three of them together. Or maybe a banjo string…. they’re kind of stretchy, aren’t they?

Yeah, it’s us again. Big Green, standing at the rim of another hole to the center of the Earth. Damn, this gets tiresome sometimes. We’re not complicated people, you know… aside from that psychology thing. All we want to do is hang out at our abandoned hammer mill, make a little music, watch the stars from the rooftops, bend pretzels on alternate Thursdays, and shoot arrows through the persistent space/time warp in the washroom that Mitch created so many months ago. It’s the simple things that give the most pleasure, is it not? (No, really… I want to know. It is the simple things, isn’t it?) And yet we are perpetually faced with these complications, these Gordian knots, these Rubic Cubes, these Junior Jumbles, these Uncle Art’s Funland spot-the-differences cartoons, these…

Okay, right… well, this little problem we have may not be as difficult as one Uncle Art can typically dish up, but it’s a poser, that’s for sure. You see, Mitch has been building this complex system of tunnels to various destinations on the globe (some actually on the surface of the globe, but – and this is important – NOT ALL). Of course, a project this ambitious requires rigorous testing to ensure the safety of the patrons Mitch hopes to eventually charge MUCHO DINERO for the privilege of riding his trans-Earth trolley through the planet’s chewy center.

Who’s doing the testing? Well, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) volunteered (after Mitch worked on his self-preservation programming a bit). Then, of course, we had to send the man-sized tuber in after Marvin when Marvin somehow got himself lost in the bowels of the Earth. (What the hell… it’s a freaking GLOBE, right? Go in ANY direction and you will find the surface!) Now we’re trying to throw them both a line. They seem to have commandeered a ledge down there somewhere. That’s where the guitar strings came in. (What can I tell you? We’ve never been all that resourceful. )

I’m de-stringing the banjo as we speak. Hold on tubey! Here comes something like a rope…

Down the hole.


Hey, can you hear me down there? Mitch? Tubey? Hellllooooooooo!!!!

Oh, yeah – he’s done it again. Our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee is the “he” I mean, and he’s … well .. cracked like any good mad scientist would be. I told him a dozen times that building underground tunnels to other countries is just not a very good idea. I warned him that there would be perhaps dire consequences to attempting such a project. Why… just tell me, why do mad scientists NEVER LISTEN TO REASON? WHY MUST THEY DESTROY THEMSELVES AND ALL THAT THEY LOVE?

I guess it’s just part of the narrative of mad science. You’ve seen it a million times, on the late, late, late show. Science fiction always makes the evil pay, just like 50’s and 60’s television. Look at how superman made that clown pay! He asked for it, goddamnit. Um… but I digress. It seems as though Mitch has made the decision to build a separate tunnel to every nation on Earth. He started with Alabama (which he thinks is its own nation – don’t tell him it’s not!) and has since built tunnels to Bangladesh, Chad, and Madagascar (skipping a few ahead…. A.D.D., I suspect). So as we sit here conversing so pleasantly, Mitch Macaphee has taken it upon himself to turn the earth into a block of swiss cheese.

What is his motivation here? The most capitalistic of reasons, Colonel Austin. He wants to set up what he calls an underground “choo choo” and charge people for the privilege of riding down the hole and out the other side of this increasingly raggedy planet. Fantastic scheme, to be sure… except convincing people to ride on the freaking thing will take even more engineering prowess than actually constructing it. (You DON’T want to see the men’s room – it’s …well… substandard.) I know he means well (I think), that he’s trying to bring in some badly needed revenue at this critical juncture when yours truly is about to be ejected from the Cheney Hammer Mill by the department of health. (They take issue with all of the mongooses. What the hell – so do I! Thing is, so do the mongooses.) It’s just the method, Mitch, the method.

Speaking of methods, I have to get back to the studio. I believe I left the tape machine running. And at 30 IPS, it’s probably reached the other end of one of Mitch’s tunnels by now.

Mitch, please!


Hear that whistling? There it is again. Is that coming from upstairs or…. down… stairs. Mitch!

Oh, hi. Not sure I should be signing in today, in point of fact. No, we’re not too busy with our melodramatic posing to blog. We’ve moved beyond that phase entirely. (No money dropped like rain from the sky, so that obviously wasn’t working.) Besides, we were all getting sick of hearing one another. And as you might suspect, the Cheney Hammer Mill is like an enormous cave. Why, it’s the Howe Caverns of the northern half of central New York. (Well, that’s a slight exaggeration. Maybe the Petrified Creatures Museum of Little Falls.) Don’t tell Marvin (my personal robot assistant) that I suggested anything of the sort. He’ll start emoting again!

Well, that’s not all that’s going on around here. There are whispers of some festival this summer. That’s all – whispers. I’m not saying sFshzenKlyrn is going to squirt lighter fluid all over his famed Telecaster and light it up, then mutter cryptic oaths over its burning carcass. I’m not saying that at all. But one never knows what may happen in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the summer. And if we get called onto the big stage, what happens next is a conundrum wrapped in a tortilla. (John used to have a conundrum, but he broke the bottom head on our last live show. Pity that. Now he’s stretched a tortilla over the hole. But I digress… )

There are other things as well. Mitch has had another brainstorm. Here’s how it happened. You know how everyone is complaining about the cost of travel these days. Fuel costs! Baggage fees! It’s enough to drive a painfully normal person (or a T.V. journalist) nearly mad with anger. Well, Mitch has a solution. You see, it seems the diameter of the Earth is a shorter distance than the circumference. And if you tunnel straight through the Earth’s crust, you can get places a hell of a lot faster. W.t.f. – China is only 8,000 some odd miles away, and it’s all straight down. All you need is a parachute for the very end (and something clever to say to that “America’s Energy Companies” lady riding past you in that glass elevator). Only trouble is… all these holes in the ‘Oit is going to make the old girl whistle as she spins.

Hmmmm… Whistle and spin. If they still made records, that would be a good name for one.

Making noises.

What was that sound I heard, coming from down below? Some kind of tectonic activity? A passing subway car? Or could it be…..  a tuber in distress?

Tubey and Marvin (my personal robot assistant) are still exploring the inner bowels of the Oit. I would post images they’ve sent via their cell phones, but you would hardly believe your own eyes if you saw them. Crikey, there’s a lot going on down there – much more than when we did that Jules Verne-like tour to the center of the Earth a few years ago. Amazing… but then, there’s a lot of space below us, if you think about it. (Even if you don’t think about it. ) So take my word for it. Don’t go there. Just don’t. It’s hot. It’s mean. It’s just plain dangerous.

So, what does this have to do with you? Well, not much. That’s the nature of the internets as we know them. A lot of random, stupid detail about people’s personal lives of interest to no one other than themselves. We are certainly guilty of that. Yeah, I know the standard jibe. Big Green is all yak and very little music, right? Well…. right enough.  Too much talking, not enough music – got it. And it’s been almost a year and a half since our last release, International House. So what the hell – time to get off our sorry butts and start strumming, pounding, screeching again.

Well, if that’s what you’re thinking, I’ve got some good news. (Well… let’s say some not bad news, anyway.) It so happens that we are working on a little project, way down yonder. We’ve got an enormous backlog of ludicrous songs that have yet to be properly recorded. So here’s the plan – record them AND play them live. And what the hell – let’s do a powerpoint, besides. Matt and I have been knocking our heads together, and we’ve started laying down some tracks with Marvin (when he’s available) recording reference drums until John White returns from his extended trip to Madagascar. (Where do you rent a gas car in Madagascar?) The virtual reels are rolling… that’s what that freaking noise is.

Oh well. Much to do (and less to say) around these parts.