Tag Archives: Mitch Macaphee

Usual Rubbish

Mitch cashes in on a long shot.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Look, I may not be a venture capitalist … or even a garden-variety capitalist, but this much I know: it’s not going to work. I would stake my reputation on it. And maybe even stake something valuable on it as well.

Yes, you guessed it – trouble at the mill. How is it that you can see into our very souls? Are you Kreskin? Criswell? Big Green must know … but not right away. For now, suffice to say that our squatter’s household has been turned upside-down by the raw power of unbridled ambition and simple, bald greed. I ask you – what other band has to put up with this kind of shit? (And don’t say Chefs of the Future.)

You know, I told my illustrious brother not to leave the T.V. on during the day. The reason is simple. There’s always a chance that our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, will see it and start obsessing over something, anything. Well, it happened this past Sunday, during the multiple hours of coverage they gave to Richard Branson’s space flight.

Missile envy

Now, maybe Mitch is getting a little old. And maybe he’s just getting a little more crazy. Whatever the explanation might be, he is determined to beat Branson at his own game. It is HE, Mitch insists, who first traversed interstellar space (from an Earth launch point, mind you). “Why is Branson getting all the credit?” Mitch says, his fists waving in the air.

I think what really got Mitch, though, was the knowledge that Branson is planning on charging his passengers $250K a seat. Ever see those cartoons where a character’s pupils turn into dollar signs? That’s actually what happened to Mitch. Next thing we knew, he was forging hard alloys in the shop and sticking them together.

Looks real, uh ... anatomically correct, Mitch.

Let’s do launch!

Okay, so I think Mitch is failing to consider some important factors in his competition with various space-happy billionaires. One is that he is not, in fact, a billionaire, though as a mad scientist, he can invent all the money he wants. The other is that he doesn’t get scads of free media every time he uses the can or launches a rocket shaped like his penis. I don’t think he can invent his way out of that deficit … OR CAN HE?

There is one more thing. Branson and Bezos and the other one have access to a handy launch pad for their space flights. We don’t have anything of the sort at our disposal. Unless, of course, Mitch is thinking of using the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill as a kind of mission control center, maybe launch his flights from the courtyard.

Holy shit, Mitch. We’ve got enough trouble with the codes department as it is.

Usual Rubbish

Taking the words WAY too literally.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Jesus, man … another song about geoscience? Just wait until Mitch gets his hands on that. What’s the topic this time – gravitation? I guess he’s already fucked with that sufficiently. Still, I worry.

Yeah, that’s right. No one wants to see your friends in Big Green just moping around the abandoned hammer mill like a bunch of sad sacks, bickering with one another. So we make an extra effort to smile when we get visitors. And if we’re not in the mood, we get Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to do it for us. No, he doesn’t have anything like what you might call a mouth, but he’s got some grill work to show, and that will do in a pinch.

What’s the beef? Nothing serious. Just interrogating my illustrious brother Matt about the subject matter of his recent songwriting. Some of you may recall that his lyrics have spawned some trouble in the past. No, they’re not controversial or obscene in any way, but they do give Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, some bad ideas. And he tends to take our song lyrics very literally.

The Question of George

A couple of years ago it was Matt’s song “Why Not Call It George?”, the lyric for which has always sounded to me, in part, like a bulleted list of mad-man items:

Gravity can: (a) make your mind flow out from your tongue; (b) take your eyes downtown to see the nuns all bunched up on the tiles; (c) pull your lips back from your smile

(Hear it yourself: Check out our live version of the song on our YouTube channel.)

Parts of that song made Mitch think he could (dare I say it?) rule … the world! Or at least reverse continental drift and reclaim Pangaea. I got nervous when he started spending months at a time in the lab … and the ground started shaking. Not. good.

This doesn't seem like such a good idea.

Eruption Imminent!

Then there was “Volcano Man”, a track from our 2nd album, International House. Mitch started obsessing over that one as well. You know how grade school kids sometimes build those baking soda volcanoes for school projects? Well, that’s a miniature version of what we had to deal with around this dump. Of course, Mitch had to open a vent straight down to the Earth’s molten caramel center, just so that the ‘cano was authentic. He was doing it with an upside-down rocket, Crack In The World style. What a mess!

Anyhow, I’ve tried to encourage Matt to write songs about less volatile things. You know, like …. butterflies, or cobblestones, or vegetable stew. Maybe you’ve got some suggestions that don’t suck (like these do).

Usual Rubbish

Daddy took the t-bird away (Damn him!)

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2000 Years to Christmas

Yes, yes …. I know it’s warm out. It’s hot as all hell in here, for crying out loud. Go ahead and open a few windows in the foundry room. You’ll need a ladder and a hook. And if anything catches fire, best call the hook and ladder.

Well, it’s predictable that as soon as the warm weather settles in, members of the Big Green entourage start getting restless. These long winters in an abandoned hammer mill can really take it out of you. But I have to say, summers are no better. It gets hot enough in here to melt all those discarded hammer heads. (I see claw-head hammers bubbling.) Who can blame the crew for wanting a little fresh air, right?

Of course, some of their notions about recreational activities are a little, let’s say, non-standard and unrealistic. Just to be clear, we don’t have an entertainment budget. We also don’t have a transportation budget. Not to put too fine a point on it, but we don’t have any kind of budget, period. We scratch and scrape for every morsel, but because we are a collectivist institution, we all share the workload. This morning I was on scratch duty. Tomorrow it will be scraping.

Surf’s Up On The Erie!

Marvin (my personal robot assistant) spent too much of the winter months watching beach movies. He’s got it into his little brass noggin that he wants to go water skiing on the New York State Barge Canal, which runs right by our mill. I keep telling him the damn thing isn’t deep enough or … well … watery enough to water ski on, but he’s insisting.

He thinks if he gets enough speed, he’ll be able to do some jumps even, but dude, there isn’t enough speed in the world for you to manage that.

Looks a little too placid to me, man.

But You’re Not Ben, Abe

For his own part, Anti-Lincoln has decided to fly a kite in the middle of Little Falls, on the busiest street in this tiny city. He obviously thinks his status as an antimatter former president is going to keep him from having his ass hauled to jail like the other miscreants. I’m not so sure.

I reminded him that it was Ben Franklin, not Abe Lincoln, that was the historical American personage who flew kites in the cartoon shows of my youth. (That was how he invented electricity.) His rejoinder? “What part of anti-Lincoln do you not understand?” Fair cop.

Mitch Macaphee, on the other hand, considers true recreation to be curling up with a bottle of Thunderbird. Until daddy takes it away, of course.

Usual Rubbish

Taking the rap for unlicensed cyber busking

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2000 Years to Christmas

Can you just hold the camera still, man? I look like I’m playing on the Titanic …. or maybe the Lusitania. One of those big boats that went down, but not before a lot of rocking. And speaking of rocking …. HOLD THE DAMN CAMERA STILL!

Oh, hi, out there in cyber land. It’s your old friends Big Green, here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. (No connection to the former Vice President or the current congress member from Wyoming.) Now, I’m sure you’ve heard all about how hard this pandemic has been on musicians and other performers, with the possible exception of mimes. (Wherever they gig, they’re safe from COVID if they stay behind that glass wall.) Well, it’s certainly been hard on us.

Hard times in the city

How hard, you ask? Thank you for asking! Well, our finances were in the sewer before the pandemic hit. And of course, most of our gigs are played on other planets in other solar systems, but once those space aliens heard about COVID, none of them would grant us space visas. That means no space gigs, no space tour, and no space gold. Bing, bang, bong. (No accident that that story ends with a bong.)

What about conventional work, you say. Don’t be ridiculous! The only work you can get around here is baking bread or carrying boxes for slave wages so low that people do better by staying home and collecting unemployment. So that’s what we’re doing, minus the collecting unemployment part. But as always, we need a revenue stream – one that will run straight through this mill. (I’d settle for a revenue creek.)

Yeah. Kinda shakey.

So, we’re doing what a lot of bands do nowadays – cyber busking. We’re breaking out the guitar and playing random songs into the void of the internet, in hopes that some ether-like value will come floating back to us like bread upon the waters. Well I know that SOUNDS like a good idea, but it turns out to be more complicated than anyone might have imagined.

Feeling the earth move

For one thing, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) can’t hold a web cam still to save his batteries. All of our performances look like a cheap summer stock production of The Last Days of Pompeii, the musical, special effects provided by a DUMB ASS AUTOMATON! Of course, we can’t afford a steadycam … so it’s the shaky cam for us.

Another thing we can’t afford: lawsuits! We made the questionable choice of playing some covers. First came the copyright strikes. Then came the cops and lawyers. I’ve asked our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, to come up with some … um … scientific remedy to this problem, but it turns out HE’S afraid of the law, too. So … looks like it’s back to original material for us. Or just very poorly rendered versions of pop songs.

Usual Rubbish

Home for the Hella Days.

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2000 Years to Christmas

There it is again. See it? That white stuff, floating down from the sky to vex us. Why, Lord, why? I only just pulled the tarp off the hole in the roof last Saturday, and now this! MITCH!!

Sorry, folks. Didn’t mean to melt down all over the blog post. It’s this damnable weather that’s got me riled up. Freaking snow, coming down through the sky-wide gap in the roof of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home. As it that isn’t bad enough, Anti-Lincoln is in the forge room making snowmen …. like a child! So un-presidential. (Which, I suppose, is to be expected.)

Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Of course, not everyone can do anything about it, and what makes this April snow particularly frustrating is the knowledge that we have here amongst us someone who actually can control the weather. I’m referring, of course, to our esteemed mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee, who has toyed with atmospheric disturbances as a pass time, but seems completely unwilling to use his knowledge for the good of his comrades. You’re no freaking use, Mitch – face it!

Well, I suppose if it’s going to be winter again, maybe we should put together another Christmas album. God knows we have enough numbers. Anyone who has listened to our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, over the past ten years knows that we’ve recorded at least an album worth of ridiculous Christmas songs over that time. Why not package them up, tie them in a bow, and toss them out to the masses? Why the hell not? Happy Hella Days!

Ah, Christmas. Just like I remember it.

As Dylan said, I’ve got a head full of ideas that are driving me insane. None of them are any good, but better to have bad ideas than no ideas at all, right? Or …. maybe not. In any case, I know I’m probably over-reacting to the weather. I’m not sure the world is ready for another Big Green Christmas album. (In fact, I’m not sure Big Green is ready.)

So, maybe put a hold on the Christmas project, and pull the tarp back over what used to be a roof. Then close the freaking windows and stoke up the boiler. I’ll ask Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to put some more coal on the fire. In fact, you go out right now and buy a new coal scuttle. Yes, you do that before you dot another i, Marvin robot!

Damned hella days!

Usual Rubbish

Ear candy.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Turn it down, the radio! No, that’s too low. Now turn it up again. Ah, that’s perfect. What’s that you say? It’s not a radio? But it has dials and lights and noise comes out of it. This is strange.

Oh, hi. I was just contemplating a new advance in audio science called the Eight Track Cartridge Player – a bold invention that enables you to copy a two-sided, long-playing record onto a medium that’s broken into four equal parts … so inevitably, one or more of the songs on the LP will be randomly broken in half somewhere in the middle. Or there will be big unexplained periods of silence at various points on the album. Or both. That IS a step up. Now if we could just get a record album onto some kind of medium that would allow us to play the whole thing from beginning to end without any of that nonsense, skip to another track instantaneously, fast forward, etc. Wait …. WHAT??

You know, the thing about living in an abandoned hammer mill is that you’re so isolated from the outside world, you almost literally become unmoored in time. Even your mad science advisor loses track of what decade it is, and starts inventing things that have already been invented in previous times, thinking they are his or her own ideas. Not that anything like that would ever happen around here. Okay …. in fact, that HAS happened around here, truth be told. This week it was the eight track cartridge deck. Last week it was the bicycle. My guess is that, by sometime next week, he will have installed one of his new tape decks in his ramshackle bike and start riding it around the valley, cranking up the tunes, and swearing at the gaps at key points in whatever album he’s listening to. Fun times!

Wow, Mitch. Another breakthrough.

Now, if we could get Trevor James Constable’s patented Orgone Generating Device working once again, we could actually turn a profit on Mitch Macahpee’s retread inventions. How, you may ask? Well …. think of how we managed to bring antimatter Lincoln into our midst – through a time portal generated by Trevor James’s invention. So, Mitch could take his re-invented eight-track machine, set the Orgone Generating Device (or OGD) to 1957, and drop in at SONY to show those fuckers how it’s done. Of course, they would buy up the patent almost immediately, then he could move forward in time to a point when sales are sufficient to shower him with remuneration, which he could then haul back to the future to share with us. Or maybe he would just use the profits to buy himself a tony house in the 1960s and forget our sorry asses. Hmmmm …. maybe not such a good idea.

SCRATCH THAT, MITCH! TRY INVENTING THE BLENDER NEXT – I’D KILL FOR A SMOOTHIE RIGHT ABOUT NOW.

Usual Rubbish

Steady Cam.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Try to stand still, man. You’re shaking the picture. It looks like there’s an earthquake going on, like Big Green meets the last days of Pompeii. That was a volcano? Okay, so …. Big Green meets the big one. Or Big Green bites the big one. Now that’s more believable.

Oh, hi, Big Green fans. Sure, we know you’re not “fans”, exactly … just casual acquaintances who drop by every once in a while to see what’s on fire at the mill this time around. We’ll take it! Sorry to disappoint – there’s nothing on fire at the moment. I’m, of course, not counting the perpetual St. Elmo’s fire that our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee has had burning in his lab since the day he got here. (And no, I don’t mean he has a VHS tape of the movie running in perpetuity – he actually has a plasma corona discharge simulator in his lab … running in perpetuity. I think he likes the glow.) No, we’re having a normal week for once. Though our normal is, well, not particularly normal. More nermal than normal. Nothing blew up, that’s basically it.

As you know, we’ve been trying – like many other bands – to adjust to the virtual marketplace in this era of Coronavirus shutdowns and social distancing. And like many bands from a previous era, we’re having more than our share of difficulties. Doing performances on Zoom, for instance, is less than optimal, even for musicians who have some facility with digital technologies. For people like us, it’s just hopeless, and we have had to resort to other, less frequently used technologies, like long cardboard tubes, or old-style megaphones, or just hiring someone to carry our tunes around in a bucket. (Fact is, nobody in this town could carry a tune in a bucket to save his or her life.) For people used to just standing on a stage and letting the music happen, for better or for worse, this pandemic is …. well …. lethal!

Can you try to get both me AND the piano into the shot ... Scorcese?

This week, though, we stumbled upon another option. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has a body cam built into him. I think his inventor, Mitch Macaphee, was imagining he could sell Marvin to the police for use as a ludicrous robo-cop of some sort, but that didn’t pan out. Anyhow, Marvin can be our camera operator, and because he’s set up for wi-fi, we can route him into our hacked modem, push the signal up to the main fiber hub, and send our music out to thousands of potential listeners. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the capacity to record anything, so we have to do all of our songs live. And damn it, the fucker just can’t stand still. Every time we count something in, he starts rolling around. I think he’s trying to pull off a crane shot or something. We keep telling him to stop watching music videos so much, but these are COVID times, and frankly, he’s got little else to do.

Okay, so when you see a performance from us, if it looks a little shaky, that’s NOT because we live in a fault zone. It’s artistry at work, my friends. Cinematic artistry.

Usual Rubbish

Assault with Batteries.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Look, I don’t have any space in my room for this goddamn thing. And no, it can’t go in the freaking studio – it’s cramped enough in there as it is. Christ, why do you think we’ve been playing all those Cramps covers? Tight as a tick.

Yeah, that’s right – we’re having a bit of a disagreement again here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in upstate New York, our adopted home. (When they say beloved bands have gone to a farm upstate, this is where they go, my friends.) Nothing new around here. Tempers wear thin after a Winter like this one, am I right. I said, AM I RIGHT? Damn it, this COVID shutdown is even making hermits like us feel claustrophobic. Even the mansized tuber, not exactly a social butterfly, has gotten so cagey he’s decided to resurrect his long-neglected Facebook account. And hell, if he’s just dying to do something useful, I told him he should just do all of our posts while I sit back in an abandoned easy chair and enjoy some expired cider from a bell jar glass. Life of Riley.

What are we arguing about? Here’s the beef: the international space station recently jettisoned a space pallet full of spent batteries, sending it down towards an almost certain burn-up reentry. Sounds like a bit of mundane space news, right? Well, not to Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Like the rest of us, he likes to make use of discarded bits and bobs. Come to think of it, that’s principally what Marvin is made of. And so when he heard this story, it was like he discovered the pot of gold at the end of the Van Allen belt. Marvin may be a lifeless piece of tin (don’t tell him I said so), but he’s smart enough to know that even spent batteries have a little juice in them. So he appealed to his creator, Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, and talked him into pointing his tractor beam (actually, Trevor James Constable’s abandoned orgone generating device) at the discarded space pallet so that he could drag it to earth.

Here she comes, Mitch. Steady, now ...

Okay, so Mitch cranked up the tractor beam, and the whole Mill started to shake like a leaf. Before long, we could see this bloody thing hovering over the building, emitting an unearthly glow, like an aura. Mitch somewhat expertly guided the thing into our central courtyard and landed it with a dull thud. It was hot as a toaster oven on a late-Summer Saturday morning in 1974, just after the kids had breakfast and before dad shook off his hangover enough to start hollering again. (Okay … that simile went a little sideways.) But by the end of the afternoon, Marvin was able to retrieve some of the spent nickel-hydrogen batteries and install them into his personal recharging station (which, I swear, looks like a jukebox). Now he wants me to find somewhere in the mill to stow the space pallet, but I keep telling the stupid automaton that it’s too damn big.

We need a pallet garage. One of the bigger ones. Where’s my Sharper Image catalog?

Usual Rubbish

Spring Chills.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Throw another log on the fire. What’s that? No more logs? What the hell. Then break up one of those lobster traps. We haven’t caught a single lobster in twenty years of squatting in this mill – can’t understand it. Stupid trap!

Oh, hi. Yeah, you caught us looking for alternative sources of fuel again. It’s pretty much a full time job for the likes of us here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. It takes a lot of fuel to heat a big old barn of a place like this, even with the entire west wing collapsed and the north wing taken over by lunatic neighbors. In this current cold snap, we’ve resorted to burning whatever wood we can get both hands on. Brother anti-Lincoln has even started pulling up the floorboards in his personal apartment. Inasmuch as it’s on the third floor, this is making navigating around his living space more and more of a challenge. (He’s devised a system of ropes, but I believe he’s thinking of throwing those into the fire as well.)

Now, plenty of people have asked us, “Hey, Big Green …. since your name is Big Green, why don’t you install some solar panels on the roof of the Cheney Hammer Mill?” To that I respond, good question, plenty of people. We resort to something like passive solar energy – opening the blinds on sunny days and rubbing our hands together furiously. And sure, we could ask our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, to fashion some kind of perpetual energy machine, but our Mitch is a temperamental artist – if he invents a perpetual energy machine, it’s because he saw a hole in the world shaped like such a machine, then carved something out to plug that hole. Selfish human concerns, like avoiding hypothermia, are of no interest to him. He’s looking at the BIG picture … and that picture is big enough to block his view of yours truly.

Pedal faster?

We tried to get in touch with our cousin, Rick Perry, former Energy Secretary and Governor of Texas, as well as subject of our third album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, but he hasn’t taken any of our calls. So much for pulling strings. (Hey …. maybe we can pull strings to generate electricity … ) There is another option besides resorting to the assistance of celebrity relatives – getting one of those energy generating recumbent bike thingies. Just hook that thing up and go. We could get Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to pedal the thing, and that would produce enough juice to power a block of space heaters as long as your arm and thick as your ass. For the record, Marvin’s not crazy about the idea, and suggested I might consider doing it myself as a way of shedding some of the COVID pounds I’ve put on over the past year. Still, it’s one way of getting through March without ending up having to be picked up with a pair of ice tongs.

This will be easy. Just set up the bike, plug it into the wall, and pedal backwards. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do it.

Usual Rubbish

Red Planet.

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2000 Years to Christmas

Come in, Rangoon … I mean, Marvin. Jesus, this is hard! C-Q, C-Q … Marvin, do you read me? Come in, come up, come over …. come on, man! Hey … is this thing on?

Oh, hi, out there in the land of Big Green listeners, readers, etc. It’s your old friend Joe, locked away here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our longtime squat-house concealed in the forested hills (or hilly forests) of central New York state. An easy place to seclude yourself in … to. No one would ever think of looking for you here. That’s largely because, well … no one ever thinks of looking for anyone or anything here. In fact, most people don’t even know this place exists. (Except for you, of course … because you keep coming back.) What better redoubt in a time of COVID, right? Complete isolation …. the secret to good health. Who knew?

So, what are we about this week? Well … people have to occupy themselves somehow. That applies to everyone – washed out musicians, animated vegetables (mansized tuber), antimatter ex-presidents (anti-Lincoln), and of course, mad scientists (Mitch Macaphee). And it is in the settled order of things that some people’s pass times have a greater effect on those around them than those of their fellow time-passers. So when Mitch knocks about the mill looking for something to do, he’s partly looking for someone to do it to. In this case, it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who, I feel it’s important to point out, was created by Mitch in the first place. And if he can create him, he can … well … you know. Do I have to draw you a picture? I do? Damn it!

squx.

All right, so Mitch got a little obsessed this week, watching the goddamned television. They did multiple stories on this Mars Rover “Perseverance” mission, how it was going to land, how risky it was to enter the Martian atmosphere, how forbidding the terrain on the red planet promises to be, etc. Each mention of this NASA mission seemed to make Mitch madder and madder. It was like watching one of those old pressure cookers heat up, the dial on the top flipping over to red, steam pouring out of every join. Anyway, long story short, he decided to stuff Marvin into a makeshift rocket and send him to Mars ahead of the NASA rover. Marvin’s mission: take a selfie with the rover and post it somewhere that NASA scientists could see it, just so that he could rub it in their face that he had gotten there ahead of them. Yep … Mitch seriously wants to own those fuckers, and he’ll do it if it’s the last thing Marvin ever does.

That’s why I’m cranking away at our distressed old ham radio, hoping to raise Marvin’s personal communication channel. (Not that it’s worth much, as Marvin is famously non-verbal.) If I raise him, I’ll let you know.