That title sounded really spammy, huh? You must deal! With! It! Because this is the most awesome music video you will see for a time period to be specified at a later date. It puts Doc Brown’s breakfast machine(s)* to shame… with a little help of some post-production tricks, I’m assuming.
*Edit to add that I am talking about Rube Goldberg machines here. Thanks for the reminder, Zeph!
There is just something quintessentially geeky about an a capella group doing show choir-y moves to an all-male version of Lady Gaga’s Pokerface. And doing it WELL, I might add!
That will help hold me over until Glee starts up again in April. I was surprised how much I like that show, though it’s not really that surprising because it’s pretty amazing. The hyper-stereotyped characters crack me up! But I could do with fewer musical numbers, even though duh, I know that’s half the point of the show. And I want to smack Will Schuester most of the time.
I was in show choir in my small high school (it was my dream, I should probably mention) though I was a very average dancer and certainly not one of the “popular kids” in the group. Which is kind of sad when you think about it. Most of us were in band, choir, show choir, and the school’s various theatrical performances together. Still, I had fun and it gave me a place to fit in and fall in love with guys who I didn’t realize were gay. Promoters of abstinence-only education should take note that homosexuality in high school increases virginity rates among straight teens! At least in cases like mine.
I was nodding off in front of my laptop last night while writing this, and then today (Thursday) has been a bit of a whirlwind without internet access. So just imagine that you were reading this Wednesday night.
My final masterpieces have been turned in for my Drawing I class and I took the final exam this morning. I’ll share those soon. I went home to pack, then Ben drove me to the airport (with only 1.7 trillion Utah Driver incidents along the way) where the security line was long and I didn’t have a seat assignment. When I checked at the gate, the agent printed out a little receipt with seat number 20C that turned out to be in the very last, and very windowless, row of the small plane.
However.
I sat next to a very friendly Brit named Phil, who turned out to be the manager of singer/songwriter Bobby Long. Bobby had been sitting on the other side of the aisle, but he moved up when two girls asked him to switch so they could sit together. Phil said he’s pretty shy, so if I’d been sitting next to him we might not have spoken at all.
Given the tight quarters and the fact that there was no freaking window for the poor passengers forced to sit in the very back row, insert pity party here, Phil and I fell into small talk pretty easily. When he revealed that he was three weeks in to a one-slash-two-year world tour with Bobby Long, I smiled and said, “oh!” but clearly had no idea who Bobby Long was.
Turns out he co-wrote the main song for the Twilight movie (which I have not seen, and have no real desire to see) and that thrust him head-on into famous… though according to Phil he’s “the real thing” when it comes to folk singing and songwriting. Which of course he’s going to say as his manager, but he struck me as being more sincere than the stereotypical manager/agent. Or maybe it was his sexy British accent.
Regardless, we chatted for nearly the whole ride, which is something I rarely do. Granted it was under two hours. We agreed that the back row of the plane has a special “gang” dynamic since we’re all stuck in the back. Shaunette, the Memphis-based flight attendant who enthralled Phil with her accent and beautiful dark skin, was part of our gang when she sat in a pull-out seat in the aisle next to me during take-off and landing of the really bumpy flight. Good thing I’m not claustrophobic or overly sensitive to turbulence, because hoo boy.
Overall, my conversation with Phil was pretty normal. We talked about our families, the challenges of air travel, Ernest Hemingway, Neil Gaiman, Moxy Fruvous*, and, you know, the rigors of traveling the world playing sold-out gigs and becoming more and more of a recognizable public figure. I’m not one to get fangirlish over someone just because they’re famous, and Phil expressed appreciation for that. He referenced people whom he calls Shakers—those who instead of using actual words when they meet him and/or Bobby, they just shake or nod their heads a lot and make grunting half-words. Star-dazed, I’d say. I think I’ve seen enough celebrities, and had the opportunity to talk to a few**, to understand that they’re all humans and most likely overwhelmed by overbearing fans and I do not want to be THAT GUY.
Bobby had a gig in Denver that night, and since I’d told Phil that I was flying to Denver for my sister’s PhD defense, he invited me (with a plus-one) to come by the sold-out 350-person venue. As in, he would put my name on the list. Now that, in general, was enough to make me all giggly inside. I’ve never had my name on the list for a concert or anything like that.*** Schweeeeeet.
I wish it would have worked out, but ultimately it didn’t. Monique was pretty stressed while preparing for her defense on Thursday, so I decided that being with her was more important than attending a concert. Even if Bobby Long is some superstar 22-year-old folk sensation. Phil said that he’s planning a concert in (Colleen, are you listening?) Boise in November, so maybe Ben and I can drive in for that. Shaunette and I both had very good things to say about Boise, between screams from the two girls sitting across the aisle as we surfed the rough tide of the atmosphere in our pea-sized plane.
But Phil revealed his real motivation for the Boise show: he wants to visit Ketchum, Idaho. Boise will get to see Bobby Long because Phil is a HUGE fan of Ernest Hemingway. I found this very amusing, especially since I’m a huge Neil Gaiman fan, who is a (sort of ex-pat) British author. We each had a book out from our favorite authors. Except he hadn’t heard of Neil Gaiman. My jaw dropped and I cried a little, but then I figured “one less fan I have to beat down in line to meet him.”
In any case, staying with the fam turned out to be the right decision for the evening. Monique practiced her thesis presentation in front of the three of us on Wednesday afternoon, and it was pretty polished and pretty damn impressive. I wasn’t nearly as concerned as she was about her committee not passing her. Then we went out for dinner and afterward, while Monique pounded a few more molecules of information into her brain, I fell asleep while writing this blog entry.
*Moxy Fruvous is my favorite Canadian modern folk rock bands, but they’re no longer together. 
I swooned big time for hottie band member Jian Ghomeshi. At one point during today’s conversation, Paul mentioned meeting Billy Bob Thornton while swimming at a hotel pool in L.A., and I had to tell him about the time Billy Bob was a dick to my guy Jian on a radio talk interview this year.
**Writing that kind of slaps a pompous sticker on my face, but it’s not like I hang out with Brad Pitt when he’s in town or anything. (ZOMG pinch me now if that were true.) It’s just that I’ve been to a few geek conventions and I volunteer for Sundance, so I’m acclimating to being in the presence of celebrity-types. Uh, nevermind that maybe I wanted to lick Alia Shawkat’s face in June.
**I only imagine that if my name ever gets on a list or I get backstage passes, I will behave exactly as Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar did when they met Alice Cooper. Especially if local history is divulged.
I am delighted to announce that yesterday evening, completely unprovoked, Ben took our relationship to a new level. He invited me to organize our CD collection.
What’s the big deal, right? It’s just a ginormous pile of plastic and digital music files.
Heh.
Okay, there are a couple things you need to understand before you can understand why this was such a big deal to me. When I was in elementary school—elementary school—I had a small bookshelf in my room where I kept my small collection of books in alphabetical order by title. My parents gave me a typesetting/rubber stamp set that I used to stamp my name in every book, as well as to make official-looking library cards for my family and visiting friends. And I kept index cards with the book titles and stamped due dates on them. I, uh, kind of really wanted to be a librarian when I grew up. (And also a veterinarian, a babysitter, and a writer, but that’s not really relevant to the story.)
By middle school, I switched to organizing my books alphabetically by author and then title. They stayed that way for many years through many moves. When Ben and I finally got bookshelves in our house a few years ago, I spent a very happy weekend pulling books out of boxes and shelving them in a loose Dewey Decimal order. Fiction is separated from non-fiction, which is grouped by subject and then alphabetically by author. It’s a little tricky because of the arrangement of the shelves. Ben understands my need to have my books organized, and doesn’t really care how I mix his in.
Now, about multimedia. Read more…
did you ever see a llama
kiss a llama
on the llama
You can blame my friend Jenny for my conveyance of this video with a catchy little tune. You can even view and listen to it on a neverending loop here.
I hate to admit it, but I CANNOT get enough of that song. I may have listened to the loop for a little too long… but it just melts my brain into goo and makes me stupid and happy.
If you like good rock music and have 5 minutes and 27 seconds to spare… I present to you Red Fang’s “Prehistoric Dog.” (It loaded slowly for me, but was worth the wait.)
My friend Bryan blogged about this being his new favorite music video. It is now also mine. Ben about flipped his lid because it was so awesome… seriously, I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his skull as he emphatically told me how much Awesome there was in this video.
And to add to the awesome, Red Fang’s website features ASCII art in their header.
They have their EP available on vinyl and MP3s, but it doesn’t look like they have a CD out yet. I would want a CD with this video included in high quality for sure. I know my SCA friends would love it!
But I doubt I could get my fellow medieval band members to recreate it. We mostly play recorders, bells, and acoustic guitars that have the medieval persona of a lute.
This… brings tears to my eyes. Is beautiful.
“Eat this glowing mushroom and they’ll all fade away.”
Thanks for the link, redrabbit! (Psst… visit her cool blog, Where Aren’t They Now.)
To my Mormon friends: Profanity ahead. You’ll probably want to skip over this one.
For some reason, this past week I started been murmuring a little cheer to myself that I learned in my first (and only) year of university marching band some eleven years ago. The band was large, so each section had its own little cheer with varying levels of obscenity.
In my under-appreciated low brass fellowship of baritone and euphonium players, our quietly charismatic section leader was able to convince even the one girl who otherwise didn’t swear to loudly quote George Carlin after every band practice and before every game:
“Rat shit, bat shit, dirty old twat. Sixty-nine assholes tied in a knot. Hooray, lizard shit, fuck!”
We even had this little logo on the front of our bright-ass neon yellow t-shirts (which doesn’t look nearly as hideous in this photo). Now you know what the initials stand for.
So thank you, George Carlin, for all you’ve contributed to the world of comedy, profanity, and freedom of speech. I’m sorry that I was never able to attend one of your comedy shows in person.
(Fast forward this 1984 “Carlin on Campus” YouTube clip to 1:17 to see his bit that includes his famously profane sports cheer.)
I think I just found another point for the Geek Test: "I have made playable musical instruments out of edible and perishable materials, like broccoli."
Seriously, I’m in awe of this guy’s enthusiasm and vegetamusicability in a mad, mad way.
