Anybody got a plumb line? You know – a weight on a string? Come on, people – let’s get resourceful here. Jeezus. How about a tape measure with an eggplant tied to the end?
Oh, hi out there in TV land. Just attempting to plumb the depths of what has become a rather large rend in the garment of our adoptive home, the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill here in upstate New York. We’re just getting a preliminary read here, but I’d say this sucker goes down pretty far. Maybe to the center of the Earth (or, to use the term New York-based geoscientists commonly employ, the “oit”). In fact, I have some pretty good evidence that this crack goes straight through the nougat to the chewy center of our lively little planet. What evidence, you ask? The first-hand kind… as in robot hand… as in Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who volunteered to, well, dive down there and take a look.
Now, when I say he volunteered, I mean so in the technical sense. In other words, I called in a 
technician – Marvin’s creator, Mitch Macaphee – and asked him to program into Marvin the willingness to volunteer for such a dangerous task, which Mitch did in a trice. No problem for an experience mad scientist. There were a few glitches, of course – in essence, Marvin’s mouth was saying “I volunteer” but his legs were pedaling in the other direction. (Those magnetic-drive casters produce some torque, let me tell you.) That aside, we managed to get a rope around him, strap a flashlight to his forehead, put a cell phone in his claw, and lower him down into the abyss. Fortunately, Marvin’s eyes double as web cams, so we were able to see the underground landscape unfold before him – fascinating journey, as that Australian interior designer might say in a totally different context. Care for a Foster’s? (Product placement – hey, got to keep the lights on somehow, right?)
Think this is an idle interest? Think again. I will admit to some ignorance as to what we might find fifty, 
seventy-five, or even one hundred miles below us. But as far as I’m concerned, anything down there belongs to US. That’s right… a pie-slice shaped vector of earth stretching from the perimeter of the hammer mill down to the core of this planet – a colossal spike of mineral wealth – belongs to us, at least as far as our new legal advisor Anti-Lincoln can tell. Yes, I know what you’re going to say… why, WHY would we consult someone as untrustworthy and disreputable as anti-Lincoln, the literal antithesis of our most revered president? A man with no scruples, no ethics… what kind of a lawyer could he possibly be? OUR kind.
So, lookit. You know how there’s gold in them there hills? Well, the real fortune is right under your nose. About 50 miles or more. Start digging!
The thing I’m seeing (as opposed to the thing I’m sayin’) is this massive crack in the foundation of our beloved Hammer Mill. Never noticed it before, actually. Funny what you run across when you’re snooping around the place, looking for discarded foodstuffs (abandoned sandwiches, leftover fruit, etc.). Pretty soon you’re picking up on all of the stuff that’s been going on without your noticing it. I always thought that Mitch Macaphee’s experiments in plate tectonics might have some regrettable consequences. Now I can see that I was right. What has Mitch been working on, specifically? Funny you should ask. It’s this thing he picked up on in one of Matt’s songs, a little number called “Why Not Call It George?” The chorus goes like this:
Now, I would be the first to caution people against taking song lyrics seriously. After all, look what happened with that Manson thing – and all because he was reading too much into Tommy James and the Shondells’ Crimson and Clover. (You know… “Crimson” – blood! “Clover” – on the graves of the dead! “Over and over” – MANY dead!) Well, Mitch has gone and done it again, trying to recreate the mother of all continents through some strange electromagnetic process that only HE understands. Hard to believe he is the inventor of something as, well, intellectually challenged as Marvin (my personal robot assistant). (Don’t tell Marvin I said that. Just attribute it to someone else, please – he’s very sensitive lately.)
working on a few songs… actually a sackload of songs. Not doing the lounge lizard thing any more. No sir, the next time we perform, it will be our own ridiculous tunes, not someone else’s. And we will have a powerpoint presentation handy to explain each one, so no one makes the mistake of misinterpreting them like Manson did with “Crimson and Clover” or whatever the hell song. Matt and I have been working furiously on this project, now that we know the potentially disastrous consequences that may result from mere un-footnoted performances. What the hell – we played “Why Not Call It George,” and now the Earth may be destroyed. Who knew?
Oh, hi. You caught me haggling over the incalculable bounty of a bunch of bananas. Somehow, twenty years ago, I never pictured myself spending any serious time trying to convince a rogue mongoose that a twice-discarded piece of fruit belonged to me, not him. (I had no vision, no foresight.) And yet here I am, on the cobblestone street outside the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, engaged in this literally fruitless enterprise. No, my friends, I am not hungry. We of Big Green are not wanting for sustenance. We have our art to feed us, our music to fill our bellies, our powerpoint slides to use as sandwich slices, our amplifier heads to employ as toaster ovens, our… our… man, I’m hungry! 
Pavlovian response for me. Still, I don’t want the banana for snacks. We are working on concepts for the next Big Green album, and one of the many, many useless ideas involves bananas. (Only one? you may ask.) Not sure – I think Marvin (my personal robot assistant) may have come up with that one. Hire an old phonograph somewhere, he says. Get a banana, he says. Put the banana on the phonograph turntable, he says. So what do I do? I go and listen to him, that’s what. Who’s the fool here, eh? The fool robot or the fool who listens to him? Oh, well. We grab ideas wherever we can find them.
spiritual/artistic food? In truth, it’s not very satisfying. And bananas are better than what I can usually wrestle away from the local mongooses. (Mongeese?) Typically that’s a breadfruit rind or coconut shells. I mean, if I’m going to have a spartan dinner, I would prefer it not be something that has to be eaten with vise-grips. Hard times indeed. We’ve been trying to put our meager minds together on how to yank ourselves out of this pit of poverty and obscurity. (Leave us face it – we have a following like the fictional band played by Flight of the Conchords.) I don’t know. Hootenannies? Open rehearsals? Slide shows? Bake sales? 
put the gun down. Put it DOWN!
Can’t believe this is his first taste of rejection! What a sheltered life these automatons lead. Even root vegetables like the man-sized tuber have experienced the dusty flavor of defeat. (Or perhaps that is just dirt from the garden from which he was plucked.) Yes, his fortunes have turned since his salad days, if you will, but tubey’s life has been far from a bed of roses prior his election to the local municipal mayoralty. (We bear some responsibility for that, of course. Yet another mea culpa. I’m thinking of changing our band’s name to mea culpa. What do you think? Hmmmmm?) And we human members of the 
should not be thought of as permanent. Why, with the right kind of attention and the requisite skills, his disappointment may be programmed away and replaced with joy. A talented machinist could give him an extra arm with the power to throw a javelin at escape velocity so that it sails through deep space and pierces the moon (or “the” Mars). His inventor Mitch Macaphee could power him down and set him on a nuclear timer of some kind so that he would restart in 1,000 or even 10,000 years – he would know the future! (Lord knows, he has already seen the past. As have we all….. right?) The sad fact is, though, that Mitch could have saved him even this childish disappointment he has encountered of late. He could have given Marvin a new set of pipes, or more terpsichorean robot legs, so that his Wizard of Oz (in three acts) performance would have brought the house down and dragged audiences in from distant cities and even the microscopic hillside hamlets that dot our countryside.