Month: July 2004

Categories
It Happened to Me Music

From the backlog: Movies from the White Cowbell Oklahoma concert at the El Mocambo

They’re trashy, they’re vile, and they’re ugly paunchy men who  sometimes play the guitar butt naked. They’re White Cowbell Oklahoma, and they put on one helluva show back in June.

Opening Sparkfest [2.2 MB QuickTime]
The opening number, accompanied by one of the band running a circular saw against some scrap metal to spark-o-riffic effect.

Chainsaw 1 [2 MB QuickTime]
Chainsaw 2 [1.5 MB QuickTime]
No White Cowbell Oklahoma perfomance is complete without a chainsaw performance. Here, they chainsaw two stuffed dinosaur toys.

Freebird in the Worst Way Possible [Not safe for work: full frontal male nudity; Lynyrd Skynrd — 1.6 MB QuickTime]
The wrongest way to play slide guitar: butt naked, with the glass slide
on your member. I’ve seen every episode of Beavis and Butt-head, so I
find this sort of thing mildly amusing.

Categories
It Happened to Me

From the backlog: Movies from the Om Festival

They’re a little bit overdue (it took place at the start of the Summer
Solstice back in June), but here they are: my videos from the Om Festival.

Friday

The Dance Screen [1.7 MB QuickTime]
At once dance area, they set up a large translucent screen and aimed a
projector hooked up to a computer at it. There was some space between
the screen and projector for dancers, which led to some pretty cool
shadow effects. Near the end of the video, I move away from the screen
and towards the DJ booth.

Saturday

Saturday Morning [1.8 MB QuickTime]
It’s never too early to dance — the SumKidz stage had DJs 24 hours a day. Here’s a 360-degree view of the area.

Poi 1 [1.4 MB QuickTime]
Poi 2 [1.8 MB QuickTime]
Poi 3 [630K QuickTime]
Poi dancing — dancing with little flaming braziers attached to chains
— is mesmerizing and also look great on video. We watched this for
about an hour.

Dharma Lab 1 [700K QuickTime]
Dharma Lab 2 [730K QuickTime]
Dharma Lab 3 [930K QuickTime]
Dharma Lab are two guys from Buffalo who make some pretty good
electronic music. They’re not afraid to drop a little classical
leitmotif into their hard techno — one of these videos has a Fur Elise sequence.

(Hey kids: you may not know what Fur Elise is, who composed it, or why it was composed, but you’ve probably heard the cellphone ringtone).

Sunday

Sunday Morning [1.1 MB QuickTime]
So…spaced…out…but the kids are still rockin’. This was one of the dance areas, around 6:30 a.m..

Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods

“Accordian” Hotel

While in Malaysia, Ross spotted the Accordian [sic] Hotel from his cab:


Dude! They’ve got Pizza Hut!

Remember, folks, it’s spelled accordiOn.

Categories
Uncategorized

Joel Washburn’s Mad Yo-Yo Skillz

[originally posted on The Farm]
Joel Washburn is a developer in Tucows’ Starkville, Mississippi office (we acquired the company formerly known as Boardtown, and I’ll leave it to our CEO Elliot Noss to explain the details). More importantly, he has mad yo-yo skillz, as this video [3 MB QuickTime] shot by acrhitecture guru Frank Reiter shows. As someone who comes from the same country as the yo-yo, I salute you, Joel!

Categories
It Happened to Me Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

The Further Adventures of the Swing Formerly Known as Secret

I’ll be damned: MuchMusic just called me, asking for the location of the Secret Swing.

VJ Jennifer Hollett (whom I met during my 2002 and 2003 appearances on the live afternoon show
MuchOnDemand) placed the call; she thought it would be a great place to
conduct a band interview.

The Secret Swing is a perfect place for interviews — I can see rock,
indie, punk and hip-hop bands jumping at the chance to answer questions
and try out the swing. It’s also located quite conveniently: a
five-minute drive from the MuchMusic studios. I’m also sure that sooner
or later, someone’s
going to shoot a music video there (I see Hawksley Workman crooning and
swinging there).

I can draw two conclusions:

  • The Secret Swing ain’t so secret now.
  • My whuffie must be going up; a major video network called me for intel!
Categories
It Happened to Me

Odd and Somewhat Disturbing Photo of the Day

Here’s Scott drinking beer — hardcore robot doggy style!

We really have to stop serving malt liquor at the Tucows annual picnic.

Categories
Music

Stuff from really cool Blogware blogs, part 1: Suw Charman breaks the news about Shatner covering Pulp!

Suw (who used to be “Sue” until a misprint in an academic paper transformed her name forever) Charman, one of the regulars on the #joiito IRC channel, points to this report that one of my musical idols, Ben Folds, is collaborating on an album with The Original Starfleet Captain, William Shatner, on a new album, titled Has Been. A substantial snippet of his cover of Pulp’s late-nineties hit, Common People, is available online [QuickTime link]. It’s awesome: Shatner does the verses in his trademark Shatnerian reading, with Joe Jackson doing the vocal wailing for the chorus, and surprisingly, it works.

I will buy this album the day it comes out.

Special message to Wil Wheaton: Are
you just gonna sit there? What say you and I collaborate? I’ll play
accordion, you sing or recite, and I thought we’d do an awesome cover
of Army by
Ben Folds (or whatever song you think would work well for us). I’ll bet
we could raise the funds for a recording session via our blogs and
PayPal. Whaddaya think?

For more stuff from Suw, be sure to check out her Blogware-powered blog, Chocolate and Vodka, at http://chocnvodka.blogware.com.