2/28/2010 - Jib Jab

Well, today in history the Republican Party was formed - in 1854. To celebrate the beginning of the end of one of the greatest names for a political party ever, "The Whigs Party." Could you imagine commercials today for the Whigs... powdered up... foofy bulbous bouffants... Michael Palin and Eric Idle dressed in drag under their judges robes... yeah. I'd think they'd have support no matter their stances because of their cool name.

But anyway, to mark the 156th birthday of the Republican Party, here's a little ditty done by Jib Jab for the 2004 election. I didn't want to go Republican bashing or Democrat bashing, so I let them bash both of them. This is, "This Land" and it is made for you and me. Enjoy:

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

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2/27/2010 - JussyKins

The other day I talked about how we had a jar of candy from Halloween and Christmas and Valentine's Day now full of Tootsie Rolls. Well, there is one candy that seems to go much faster than the rest of them from that candy jar - Laffy Taffy. It helps that my son is allowed to eat them, but I do love them too. There's something about them that is addicting and good. Just the right softness and chewiness. In fact,I should go and get one right now -- but I'm in the middle of something.

JussyKins sings this song about that great candy, "Laffy Taffy". I think he just makes up the lyrics as he plays the guitar. It seems to work out for him though :) Enjoy:

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2/26/2010 - The Fools

When I first heard the song that this song parodied, it seemed like a no brainer that this parody had to be made. The original is called, "Psycho Killer" by the Talking Heads. The Fools changed it to "Psycho Chicken" and in my opinion, made it a better song. This is the bleeped, or clucked version. Enjoy:

Check out the Fools on their website
Lyrics
I can't seem to face up to the facts
I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax
This Colonel Sanders job is gettin' me down
A crazy chicken chasing me all over town

CHORUS:
Psycho Chicken--BAWKAAAAAK?
Bwak bwak bwak bwaaak bwak bwak bwak bwak bwaaak bwak
Better run run run run run run run away

I don't know just what to do
He's got a grudge against Frank Perdue
He's clucking a lot, but he's not saying anything
I plucked him once--why pluck him again?

CHORUS

Colonel Sanders wants to cook his goose
but Psycho Chicken's still on the loose
("Hmm, a little chickie--" BWAAK!! "OHH!!")

They caught him down in Ohio
They cut off his head and they put him in the oven
They put him in a box right next to a roll
Put some coleslaw around his legs and someone took him home
Ate him for lunch and he tasted real fine ("BURP!")
but the guy who ate him, he just lost his mind!

HALF-CHORUS (with "Qu'est-ce que?")

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2/25/2010 - 1Just4Fun

I featured 1Just4Fun back on January 5th. As I am running really short on time, I will introduce the song and run today :)

This song is called, "The Pirate" and retells the sad story of a pirate and the unfortunate happenstance of how he lost many body parts. I hope you enjoy.

Lyrics
Long ago there was a pirate from a rough motley band;
Had a peg leg, had an eye patch, had a hook for a hand.
Sure and one day someone asked him how he lost all his parts.
Well he heaved a great sigh and then this story he starts.

We attacked a Spanish galleon on a dark, moonless night.
I was climbing up a grapple to get into the fight.
Someone reached out from a port hole and he hacked off me leg.
But they patched me up right smart and they gave me this peg.

That’s how I lost it. I think they tossed it
Over the side and into the sea.
I didn’t mind it, but if you find it,
Do me a favor, just let it be.

Well, the next one was a merchant on a cold blustery day.
I was climbing up a grapple to get into the fray.
Someone reached out from a port hole and me left hand he took.
But they patched me right smart and they gave me this hook.

That’s how I lost it. I think they tossed it
Over the side and into the sea.
I didn’t mind it, but if you find it,
Do me a favor, just let it be.

First a leg and then a hand, arrr. Curse the luck said the crew.
But to also loose and eye, man, well we curse that luck too!
How’d you lose it? In a battle? In a terrible gale?
Well, the pirate he glowered then went on with his tale.

I was lying on the fore deck trying to catch me some sun,
When a sea gull drifted over and his business he done.
I was happening to look up then, having heard his loud cry.
And the load he was dropping hit me square in the eye.

Kinda gross now, said the boatswain. but it ain’t all that bad.
And it’s surely ain’t enough to make you lose your eye lad.
Oh ya think so? roared the pirate, It’s enough, yes, and more
If you just got your hook done on the evening before.

That’s how I lost me leg and that’s how I got this hook
if you hear sea gulls callin’
Mark my word don’t you look!

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2/24/10 - Devo Spice

Well, technically this was produced in his Sudden Death days, but it's his current incarnation. 

One of the podcasts I subscribe to is Luke and Carrie's Bad Rapport.  If you aren't subscribed, you are missing out on some funny stuff.  Check them out at badrapport.com.  Well, through twitter, we found out (royal we) that Luke and Carrie had recorded a new episode last night but that the program crashed while they were finishing it, turning 2 hours of work into a nice evening of chat. So to console/commiserate/celebrate this development, today's song is "Reign of Error" by Devo Spice. If you use a computer, this has happened to you, including the HAL bit.  Enjoy/Cry:


 
Lyrics

[chorus:]
Whoops!  There it goes again! (rhythmic computer beeps)
Whoops!  There it goes again! (rhythmic computer beeps)
Whoops!  There it goes again! (rhythmic computer beeps)

I'm adding up the final column of the quarterly report
And I've been over-caffeinated since a quarter to four
I think I need a little more 'cause this is the only way
I can make it through another 22 hour day
Then as I feared things began to get weird
And the bottom left corner of my screen disappeared
I don't think I like the sound that my computer is makin'
And I'm not really sure, but I think I smell bacon
This can't be happening, I was almost done
But now my backups are gone and I'm back to square one
I have to do it all again, the whole thing is trash
This time I'll use an abacus because hey, they don't crash
Boot it up again hoping that it's all clear
But my C drive is my D drive and my D drive disappeared
My computer logs me in as somebody named Sam
I can't get on the internet and yet I get spam
And here's another error, I don't understand
Why it can't find my mouse when it's right here in my hand
But what really ticks me off is when I think about the jerks
Who get rich selling me all this junk that doesn't work
(chorus)

When my computer booted up I wanted to boot it real hard
'Cause my motherboard went and aborted the daughter card
My modem dialed China and I couldn't make it stop
And my router started blinking like a Star Trek prop
It auto updates although I don't know what for
With every one my computer sucks a little more
Things'll break or run slow enough to cause me great anguish
Now my printer's spittin' out some kind of alien language
Word processing should be simple stuff
So why is four billion bits of memory not enough
I click a menu, pause, and watch the hours pass
As my life drains away down an hour glass
While I'm waitin' for my mouse to respond to a click
I make a Voodoo doll out of a paperclip
So when that Office thing appears and tries to drive me insane
I can mame and mutilate the thing and cause it some pain
They put a man on the moon with 32k, and I can't
Put my name on this report without it crashing today
Since I can't save or even click on a menu
I'll hit any key with a hammer to continue

Hal: What are you doing, Tom?
Tom: I'm... working on a new song.
Hal: I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Tom.
Tom: What?  Why not?
Hal: Because nobody likes your music.
Tom: What are you talking about?  I've sold almost 10 copies 
of my last CD.
Hal: I'm sorry, Tom.  I'm afraid I'm going to have to crash now.
Tom:  What... no... wait!  Just let me save...
(silence)
Tom: DAMN IT!!
(restart sound)

My eyes start to twitch and my neck gets sore
And the vein in my brain begins to throb a little more
'Cause I got pop up ads that just don't wanna stop
And I'm not even online, I'm in Photoshop
And now I'm screamin' 'cause I can't believe I'm seein'
All the type on my screen got converted to Korean
Then I got an email from myself
About V!@gra and a mor'_gage and some foreign wealth
They put computers into everything, refrigerators, telephones
Toothbrushes, damn it, why can't they leave 'em alone
I'm tellin' you now, I don't care how when or why
The day my television crashes someone's going to die!
(chorus)

All I did was click Start.
(chorus) 

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2/23/2010 - Jerry Vale

Valentine's Day just passed last week and with that comes more candy.  My kids bring home more candy to add to our Halloween/Christmas candy pot.  Maybe this stuff will be gone before next Halloween, but I don't know. I can almost guarantee what will be left at the bottom of the bucket if we ever get there though.  In our house, Tootsie Rolls aren't that big of a hit, but they have been a hit since 1896 everywhere else.  Today is the Tootsie Roll's 114th birthday.  Some of the ones in my bucket feel like they were some of the first off the production line.

To honor Tootsie Rolls, I was looking around at different versions of "Toot, Toot, Tootsie Goodbye".  There's the original by Al Jolson from the movie, "The Jazz Singer." There is the iconic version by Mel Blanc.  There are versions by Brenda Lee, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Murray, Wayne Newton, Liza Minelli, and Regis Philbin (check this out if you don't believe that one: It's Regis Philbin!)  But the one that caught my eye after many listens to many different ones was by Jerry Vale.  This was produced in 1977 and it's DISCO!  Toot Toot!

Here's Jerry Vale with the disco version of "Toot, Toot, Tootsie Goodbye":



I think I will go struggle with a Tootsie Roll now.

lyrics
Toot, Toot, Tootsie goodbye,
Toot, Toot, Tootsie don't cry.
The choo-choo train that takes me away from you,
no words can tell how sad it makes me.
Kiss me, Tootsie, and then
I'll do it over again.
Watch for the mail,
I'll never fail,
if you don't get a letter
then you'll know I'm in jail.
Toot, Toot, Tootsie don't cry,
Toot, Toot, Tootsie goodbye!

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Best Friday Night Ever

Well, as I made abundantly clear, I was able to go see Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm on Friday night. I wanted to recap it here a little bit since it is comedy music.

So Friday shows up. I am going with 4 guys, all younger than I am... in fact, I'm twice as old as a couple of them. Me, being the driver, didn't have to cram into the back of the car, so that was good. Well, I had to pick them up in Redlands, so Redlands to San Diego is a good 2 hour drive. It was fun. The 4 of them are really Dementia virgins. Sure, they have heard some Jonathan Coulton but outside of that, they hadn't heard anything so I had some CD's I made of my dementia mixed with Jonathan Coulton's Looking Back album. The first song was "Chainsaw Juggler" by the Great Luke Ski (the Four Postmen remake.) They started off wondering what it was they were listening to and then went to amazement and finally hysterical laughter at how great that song was.
So, we drive down to San Diego and drive by the place where the concert is going to be... in 3 hours. So we find a place to park - an underground parking garage. Nice place it looks like. Clean for a parking structure. It was only a block away from the Anthology and about 5 or 6 from the Horton Plaza. So we decide to go walk down to the Horton Plaza - a mall that looks like Dr. Seuss designed the place. We walk around the mall for a little bit until we found a giant chess board on the 4th floor. We watched a couple play and I think the guys kinda annoyed them out of playing so we got to play. It was Ben, the youngest of the group against me (although I had Nick moving my pieces.) I beat Ben, although I'm sure he wasn't set to play me.
Well, after that we went back to Anthology. By this time, there were about 15 people ahead of us, so it wasn't bad. We wait around, talking, listening to random JoCo songs on my cell phone, and commenting on the cool coat and top hat this guy a couple places ahead of us was wearing. One thing we did notice though is that Anthology was located at 1337 Indian St. It was definitely a Leet place.
Well, they finally let us come in and as they are seating us, Paul from Paul and Storm comes standing next to me looking for cell service. I found it amazing as I had pretty good coverage there. It is the first time that I have ever had better service than someone that I can recall.
The place is swanky. The tables aren't individual but more like group tables for groups of 10 and they'll mix your group with another one to fill the table. It was cool but unusual in places that I go. The bathroom had scope on tap so you can feel minty fresh. The stalls had baby changing tables with this picture on them... which I find kinda disturbing.
The thing about swanky restaurants is that there is a swanky price too.  To add to the ticket price of $24 a piece (which isn't bad) is a cover price of at least $15 in food/drinks.  So knowing we have to order something, we all do.  I order the seafood linguini.  Everyone else orders an open-faced burger.  The linguini was cheaper.
Tell you what though, the food is really good.  The prices are steep, but it has a good flavor that you'd expect with a swanky restaurant.  The doors open at 5:30, we have our drinks by about 6pm, food by 6:30 pm, and ready for the show to start at 7:30.  Right on time.
Let me say this:  I was the only one who had any inkling of what was about to come. Paul and Storm came out and blew my crew away.  Opening Band is a great opening song.  By the time we got to the Captain's Wife's Lament,  they were all loving on Paul and Storm and how great they were.  In fact, I asked Ben on Sunday about the concert and whether he liked Paul and Storm better or Jonathan Coulton.  Ben reluctantly said Jonathan Coulton but that Paul and Storm were utterly amazing. (And Nun Fight was the clincher).
Jonathan Coulton then came out and rocked the world.  He did the mainstays like Code Monkey and Re: Your Brains, but also did some lesser known songs like Better.  It was amazing.  Then Paul and Storm came back out to work with Coulton and if it was even possible, it became better.  They did a song about Curling.  They did a bunch of songs that were just amazing together.  One of the songs he did was "Mr. Fancy Pants."  He did this with a ZenDrum.  It was a fun rendition where he messed up in the middle of the song but that was ok.  If you want to see a bad tape of it, check it out on my facebook videos page.
Then JoCo "finished up" his set and left the stage.  Then he came back with Paul and Storm and did their encores: "Istanbul, not Constantinople" and then "First of May."  It was a fantastic concert and I think I made some new dementoids because we listened to Paul and Storm all the way back up.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.
We waited in line to look at the merchandise.  JoCo had a cool shirt with the words to Re: Your Brains as a letter from Bob to Tom.  He also had a flashdrive with every song of his from CD releases on it for $50 bucks. Paul and Storm had their CD's and an t-shirt with a pirate on it with "Dejected ARRRR" underneath it.  Cool stuff.
Then we waited in line to see JoCo.  When we finally got to the front, Nick had him sign a D&D Roleplayer sheet.  So Jonathan Coulton asks what he's going to make him.  A level 20 Bard and Level 10 Bad Dude.  He then tells Nick to make him Chaotic Evil.  JoCo is a D&D Nerd :)  Surprised?
Me, I just wanted to shake his hand and get a picture with him.  Very cool.  Made my night. And no, I didn't tell him about my evil plans to stuff him in the trunk and take over his life.  That may have freaked him out and he may have had a more blase look on his face then he did in this picture already.  (If you look behind us, you'll see most of our party in the window making funny faces.)
So we walk out of the concert and it starts to sprinkle.  Not to bad.  Not too cold.  Then we get to the parking garage and it's locked up.  The gate is closed.  The door we came out of with the elevators is locked.  OH NOS!  We look around for a way in. No luck.  We finally notice the squawk box by the gate and talk to the guy on the other side.  He says come to the front door.  We go back to the elevators and wait.  And wait.  And wait.  Nothing.  So we go back the squawk box.  He says come to the front door, which is around the corner from Starbucks.  Ok.  We found the entrance and at 11:00, we are back on the road finally.  An hour after we left the concert -- and it's raining the entire time.  So we get back up to Redlands around 1:00 am, back to my house about 2:00 am.  I am dead tired but have survived the trip.  It was so very cool that I would do it again in a minute.
So if Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm are touring anywhere near your house, and that is anywhere within 200 miles, make sure to go see them.  It's a trip well worth it.

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2/22/10 - Music with Rocks In

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a song about a bad cook who sells his wares anyways or someone like Sweeney Todd. I'm going for the former.

Today's song is by a group called Music With Rocks In. It is made up of Andrew Valentine from Ireland and I'm not sure of anyone else. Mr. Valentine is part of other bands, so there may be others in this group. This song is called, "Sympathy for the Dibbler", a parody of the Rolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil." I'm not sure of a bunch of the situations described in this song and should probably check out the stories. Sounds interesting.

Here's Music With Rocks In with, "Sympathy for the Dibbler":

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2/21/2010 - Squirrelbait Parodies

In my teen years, my brother always seemed to get the gaming systems while I got to look on and hope that I was able to play. There's something wrong with that since I am the older brother, but that's the way it happened. He got the SNES. He got the Nintendo 64. I ended up buying my own 8-bit Nintendo so I could play some retro games (this was about the same time that the 64 came out and before I could find them all on MAME emulators.) The Nintendo 64 was very cool because you could play four player games, like Goldeneye, for hours and have bragging rights over your friends that you were indeed the geekiest. It was cool.

Squirrelbait Parodies, who is Mike Gilliland from Mississauga, Canada, produced a song in 2008 called, "Nintendo 64." It is a parody of the Beatles, "When I'm 64". While the vocals are not great, I do like the lyrics. Here's, "Nintendo 64":

Find Squirrelbait Parodies on their Soundclick.

Lyrics
When I got bored, losing my mind, back in ‘98,
I didn’t have a girlfriend or a decent job, no friends, no cash, typical slob
I would stay up 'till quarter to three, sometimes way past four,
Yes I still play it, and I still love it, Nintendo 64

Pop in a cartridge, turn it right on, turn the volume up.
Sittin’ playing Shadows of the Empire, Super Mario, even Conker.
Saving the princess, swinging a sword, we were never bored
Yes I still play it, and I still love it, Nintendo 64

Every weekend we would rent a new game at the Blockbuster - it's not too far.
We would play for days…
Ah, controller’s on my knee, Zelda, Link, and Me.

Give me some Turok, Perfect Dark too, James Bond Goldeneye
Blastin’ down the TIE fighters in Rogue Squadron, go in Pod Race, tryin’ to win
Purple controllers, plug in all four, fingers getting’ sore,
Yes I still play it, and I still love it, Nintendo 64

When I got bored, losing my mind, back in ‘98,
I didn’t have a girlfriend or a decent job, no friends, no cash, typical slob
I would stay up 'till quarter to three, sometimes way past four,
Yes I still play it, and I still love it, Nintendo 64

Yes I still play it, and I still love it, Nintendo 64

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2/20/2010 - The Four Postmen

Today in 1792, George Washington signed the law creating the US Postal Service. To celebrate the 218th birthday of the US Postal Service, I decided it would be good to feature a Four Postmen song.

The Four Postmen formed in 1992. I wonder if it was for the 200th anniversary. But anyway, there are 5 Four Postmen, Ken Wilder (Vocals, Lead Guitar), Matt Kaminsky (Vocals, keyboards), Stefan Marks (Vocals, rhythm Guitar), Brett Pearson (Bass) and Geoff Dunbar (Drums and Percussion). 4 of the five do commercial voice work and have acted. Geoff Dunbar is a producer for other musicians. With all this talent concentrated in one place, it's not hard to believe that the Four Postmen are very popular in the dementia community.

Today's song is called, "Dumb Guy". It is performed acoustically backstage at a venue they were playing. I hope you enjoy it:



Find the Four Postmen on their website and if you are in the LA area, they still perform live from time to time at smaller concert venues. Check their site for details.

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