The machinima videos that people have made for Jonathan Coulton’s geek anthem Code Monkey haven’t impressed me; unlike the Red vs. Blue series of animations, the visuals feel poorly matched with the storyline.
Better by far is this video, which does an excellent job of repurposing clips from the Japanese animated TV series Black Heaven. If you watch only one fan-made video of Code Monkey, watch this one:
The movie Deliverance has so infused its way into North American pop culture that most people are aware of its “Squeal like a pig!” scene. Back when I played background music for improv comedy shows here in Accordion City, I’d play the opening notes from Dueling Banjos whenever an actor would make some reference to butt-sex (a staple of comedy) and everyone would get the little musical joke.
In case you haven’t seen the movie, here’s the Dueling Banjos scene:
I had to laugh out loud when Miss Fipi Lele sent me this poster for a hypothetical Dreamworks-animated version of Deliverance:
My brother-in-law Andy Ramoniac honoured me by inviting me to join his balalaika group in performing a selection of Russian and Jewish numbers at his wedding reception. Between my terrible music reading — one of these days, I’m going to have to get better at it — and having to read tiny chord markings in a dimly-lit dining room, I decided to scribble out some quick chord charts for the performance:
The year was 1991, and as a DJ at Crazy Go Nuts University, I was getting a lot of mileage out of this album:
Guess what: Spencer Elden, the baby on the album cover, is now 15 years old.
[via Reddit and The Striker Diary]
The “Give Me Liberty” after-work party takes place on the second Thursday in June and is a chance for people who live and work in Liberty Village — an area of Accordion City full of factories converted into lofts, offices and television and radio stations — to gather for a street party featuring a beer tent, food from local restaurants and live and DJ’d music.
One of the traditions of the “Give Me Liberty” party is my playing a couple of tunes on accordion between DJ sets. This year was no different — I played Fatboy Slim’s Praise You and Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild for the crowd. The Ginger Ninja shot video of the whole thing, which appears below:
This graphic made me laugh out loud:
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
(I’ve been threatening to learn that song on accordion.)
Last week, I got an email that went like this:
I’m a producer at MTV Canada and we’re looking for someone with your skills and talent to help us celebrate Accordion Awareness Month – which, as I’m sure you know, is June.
We’re heading out on the street with one of our hosts to talk with passersby about accordions and would love to have someone there to play us through.
Would you be willing and able to film for about half an hour either tomorrow or Wednesday in the Yonge and Bloor area? Our timing is somewhat flexible so we hope you can make it.
One of the traits that I have inherited from my American ancestry is that I am always ready to appear on television on short notice. Of course I accepted the invitation!
As a result, I spent my lunch hour Wednesday in the vicinity of this building:
The old Masonic Temple at the lucky address of 888 Yonge Street (at Davenport) in beautiful Accordion City is the current home of MTV Canada’s studios. Prior to that, it was the “CTV Temple of Television”. Before that, it was a concert venue simply known as “The Concert Hall”, and before that, it was the Rockpile club. I’ve been to a number of concerts there, my first one being Nina Hagen back in the 80s, my last one being Tool in the 90s.
I didn’t have to wait too long in their green room, shown below…
…and there’s lots of stuff in there to keep guests fed, hydrated and entertained. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to indulge in a coupel of rounds of the XBox 360 version of Guitar Hero II (I’ve got the PS2 version at home):
I was pleased to find out that I’d be doing the segment Daryn Jones, who hosted my last appearance on MTV Live. I’ve always liked Daryn’s work on the Rick Mercer Report and was a big fan of his old Comedy Network show, Buzz, which he co-hosted with “Mistah Mo”. Funny stuff, that.
The plan was simple — we’d make our way along the short distance between the MTV Canada studios and Accordion City’s main intersection, the corner of Bloor and Yonge streets and get reaction shots from passers-by, improvving all the way. We got shots not only on the street, but inside a pizza parlour and a hairstylist’s as well, and the highlight of the shoot had to be an improvised throwdown putting me against a digeridoo player busking at the corner of Bloor and Yonge.
I’ll hold off on more details about the shoot until after it airs, but I can say that I had a great time doing the shoot, and working with Daryn is always a blast. I even saved a little money: when I went to get my car from the nearby parking lot, the attendant gave me a discount. He told me that he saw me do the shoot from his booth and said: “I always give good rates to celebrities.” Rock!
I have no idea when the segment will air, but it’ll air on Daryn’s show, MTV Live, sometime soon. I’ll post details as soon as I find out.