The answer is Phil Taylor for $500. After all these years my dream job is finally available! Rumor is that if Alex Trebek lives long enough to complete the 2014-2015 season he will finally retire. From blogger to Jeopardy host! My ascension to the throne is near. Admit it; if you’re being perfectly honest with yourself, once Alex shaved off his porn moustache he completely lost his game show host mojo. That is not a mistake I will make. I am in fact working on a handlebar moustache as we speak.

What is jumping to conclusions Alex? Not so fast my little pretty.  I’m not going to be happy just hosting Jeopardy! I’m going to revamp and revitalize that tired old game show to return it to its rightful place as an American institution as respected as the Presidency itself. How am I going to do that you ask? Please state your answer in the form of a question. What is, introducing new categories Alex? For a while Jeopardy was fun, but eventually the common man (me) got tired of Alex and all the smug little contestants and their snooty little answers to Potent Potables and Potpourri.

Categories I would introduce would include Beer Pong Rules, Lindsay Lohan arrests, and Crazy Celebrity Quotes. Oddly,  the correct answer to every question in all three categories is “Who is Alec Baldwin?”. The Visual Daily Double will be Name that Roadkill. Which brings me to the next change I would make to the show.

Enough with the “I’m sorry; the answer must be in the form of a question.” If it’s in the form of a question, it’s not an answer, it’s a question! That idea had to be some weird Canadian voodoo Alex brought across the border from our neighbors to the North. On Phil Taylor’s Jeopardy! if you get an answer right I don’t care how you say it, as long as you don’t say it in Canadian. I can’t believe Alex Trebek didn’t get punched in the face more often over this rule.

On Phil Taylor’s Jeopardy! there will also be no more High School Week or College Week either. All of us grown adults who have navigated the universe successfully enough to get where we are do not need any snot nosed little punks acting all superior because they know a word that rhymes with orange.

Right now the talk is that Matt Lauer has the inside track on the job. Puh-leeze! His popularity is receding faster than his hairline. If you’d like to support my bid for Jeopardy! host, after Alex retires or is the victim of an unfortunate accident, you can follow me on Facebook or try my humorous murder mystery novel, White Picket Prisons, available for just $2.99 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iTunes.  I also want to say a quick welcome to all those who came to The Phil Factor from Candy’s Raves after reading my guest post this week.

******

Here’s the Weird Al song referenced in the title… “and he’s gonna sit next to you!”

______________________________

One of the Cabineteers sent this on:

Mollard/Tosi are in the back of the bus with Taizé! See the attached link. This is an official guest list. Please, note the following:

• The OCA isn’t listed with the other (truly canonical) Local Orthodox Churches
• Mollard is styled as “His Eminence”, not “His Beatitude”
• The OCA is classified with such entities as the Taizé Community in France because it really isn’t part of the Orthosphere, Eastern or Oriental
• The UOC/MP representatives attended as individuals; Metropolitan Platon Udovenko served in Argentina in 1973-80, he knows Pope Francisco personally, he was accompanied by Metropolitan Antony Pakanich of Borispol (the UOC/MP Chancellor)

Did the Vatican do this so as to not offend the EP? Sure. Does the Vatican also know that the Centre washed their hands of the OCA? You bet. Mollard made himself and his church look ever worse if this is possible…

P.S. 

When I viewed this link, I practically fell off my chair laughing. Mollard and Tosi could star in a movie entitled, Abbott and Costello Meet the Pope.

******

I need add nothing, save to observe that the UOC/MP group wanted NOTHING to do with the Blunder. That means that Alfeyev is on Vladimir Sabodan’s shit-list. One of the main raison d’etres for this site is that it gives people a chance to bring out news that they normally couldn’t… people such as Lyonyo, Bobby, and Tosi, along with the other First Family bozos, are known for their arrogance and cruelty. I’ll stand tall and take the heat… however, the kudos aren’t mine… they belong to a courageous band that wants nothing more than a return to sanity in what’s now known as the OCA. In fact, I got the link from several sources, but this one gave more background… big thanks and “have a drink” from me…

We KNOW the path home… but when shall we take it? It IS up to us…

BMD

SOUNDTRACK

Hot on the success of Even Worse, Al was given the green light to make a movie.  It was called UHF and it tested very well with audiences.  But then it tanked at the box office (well, it made back the money but little more).  Although it has since gained a huge following as a cult movie.  It is very weird indeed (and Kramer is in it!) but it’s also very quotable and quite funny.  The soundtrack has a few songs and skits from the movie as well as a few extra songs that were not in the movie.  And, despite it’s rather middling status as a soundtrack, it features a couple of Al’s best songs.

“Beverly Hillbillies” is a surprisingly effective pastiche of Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” and the theme from the “Beverly Hillbillies.”  The fact that Al originally wanted to use a prince song (but was not given permission) shows just how creative he can be to twist it around in a totally different way.  Mark Knopfler plays guitar.  Another sci-fi original is “Attack of the Radioactive Hamsters from a Planet Near Mars.”  It kind of updates “Slime Creatures from Outer Space” which also wasn’t that good.  ”Isle Thing” is a parody of Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” which is about Gilligan’s Island, but from the POV of someone who hasn’t watched the show and whose girlfriend is hooked on it.  It’s surprisingly funny   It’s interesting that Tone Loc sampled Van Halen, but I believe Al’s band plays the whole thing.

The Medley returns on this album (sorely missed on Even Worse).  Strangely, “The Hot Rocks Polka” is a medley of Rolling Stones songs.  The theme song “UHF” is a good theme song.  It’s funny but more importantly it explains the movie nicely.

The disc also includes snippets from the movie Gandhi II promo.  ”Let Me Be Your Hog” is a 17 second clip from a show in the movie.  There’s also the awesome commercial for Spatula City.  And “Fun Zone” is a 2 minute instrumental that is the theme to Stanley Spadowski’s Clubhouse.

“She Drives Like Crazy” is a parody of Fine Young Cannibals (the fact that Al can hit Roland Gift’s notes is quite impressive) although the song is merely okay.  ”Generic Blues” is just that–an over the top version of any blues song you’ve heard.  Those few low points are more than made up for by these closing high points.  ”Spam” is a great parody of R.E.M’s “Stand.”  It works as both parody and as its own lyrical theme.  ”The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota” is the first of Al’s epic songs (this one clocks in at almost 7 minutes).  It’s a story song told in the spirit of Harry Chapin’s  30,000 Pounds of Bananas.”  It’s one of my favorite early Al songs.  It’s fun and silly but it never loses focus.  And the thought of the family loving the biggest ball of twine is just too funny.  And who knew there were so many things that rhymed with Minnesota?

But the tanking of UHF meant that Al had to regroup.  And as he waited for the next Michael Jackson song to parody, a little thing called grunge happened.

[READ: February 22, 2013] Captain Underpants and the Terrifying reTurn of Tippy Tinkletrousers

Pilkey had been away from writing for several years with family emergencies.  So it has been six years since the previous Captain Underpants book–that’s a long time for most readers who may now feel too old for the books, although no doubt many new readers to the series (like me!) have sprung up in the meantime.

So, what does Pilkey do for his return?  He produces a 300 page epic!  One that brings back a bad guys from past books (as was promised in the last book), one that features a lot of mind bending time travel and, ultimately, one which focuses mostly on George and Harold as kindergarteners (five years before the usual present in his books).  And it is an amazing book, one that really shows how creative the boys are and one which deals with bullying–a subject that has never really been present in these books (except from the teachers).  Pilkey really created a great book (the other books were great too, but they were more slight.  This one is packed with goodness).  And I have to assume he aimed the books for slightly older audiences.

The book opens with the usual history of Captain Underpants by George and Harold, although given the six year absence, this one recaps everything that has gone before.  It also explains how in the last book, George and Harold were getting in trouble because of their evil twins from another dimension when Professor Poopypants (now named Tippy Tinkletrousers) showed up in his mechanical pants shooting ice rays at everyone.

Then Pilkey breaks the story and the animation style to introduce the banana cream pie paradox (in a very formal computer generated style of picture which really sets it apart).  In a nutshell–a man makes a banana cream pie.  He goes back in time and the tree that he got the bananas from is killed–so how can he have made the pie?  (His version is much funnier).  But the point is, be really really REALLY careful when you time travel.

The book continues with The REAL ending to the last adventure.  Which is that George and Harold went to juvenile detention (which was so much like school, they didn’t mind) and Mr Krupp went to jail (which he did mind).  In Krupp’s prison was Tippy Tinkletrousers who was making a statue for Warden Gorden B Schmorden.  Of course, it is soon revealed to not be a statue but a mechanical body with a freeze ray.  He climbs in, but then he sees Krupp.  He thinks he looks familiar, so he grabs the Principal and stomps off in search of Captain Underpants.  Krupp says George and Harold would know where he is so they stomp off to Juvie (I love that there’s a no child left behind poster there) where Director Hector Schmector is happy to get rid of the troublemakers.

Seeing the trouble they are in, the kids snap their fingers, Krupp turns into Captain Underpants and runs off for a cape.  Tippy of course gives a slap to his own head when he realizes that he had Captain Underpants in his hands all that time.  The Captain returns and a fight ensues in which Tippy’s pants are frozen to the ground.  He can’t escape so he uses the time travelling button in the pants to go back in time by five years.

There we see kindergartener Harold, bored and sad because he has no friends. He draws really well but that doesn’t endear him to anyone (I love that with just a few lines, Pikley manages to convey that  the George is indeed five years younger even though he doesn’t look that different). Harold is constantly bullied by Kipper Krupp (who is the Principal’s nephew) and his three henchman.  Kipper managed to convince his uncle that the other kids are always being mean to him so he never gets in trouble for anything.

Then we meet George (who has an afro!).  George is super smart.  He could be in third grade but his parents want him to socialize with kindergartens.  He is a happy kid (even though his parents make him wear a tie) and he skateboards to school.  On his way to school he sees the bullies picking on Harold.  Harold is hiding at a gas station but the attendant doesn’t even stop to help poor Harold.  So George changes the gas station sign to read Free Bra Inspection.  And plenty of irate women come over and give him what for.  Then (in Flip-O-Rama) George uses that dreaded tie to give the bullies what for.  Harold and George get detention for hurting Kipper and it’s in detention that they make their first comic book (The Adventures of Dog-Man).

The boys feel good for having beaten Kipper but Kipper is still bullying little kids so they exact a complex plan of revenge, which involves stealing Kipper’s lock and humiliating him with his cell phone.  It also involves creating a new person, Wedgie McGee, who is a ghost and creating a whole new comic book about him.   The elaborate prank involves stilts with pants and shoes (so they can hide them in a stall and it looks like someone is in the bathroom).

The plan works but it also makes Kipper angrier.  The boys imagine using the pants and stilts for the rest of the plan, but George’s afro sticks up too high.  So, Harold gives him a flattop!  The elaborateness of the final prank is really amazing–I was very impressed at how well thought out it was.  And just as George and Harold’s plan is coming to the end, Tippy Tinkletrousers appears out of the sky, un-doing the real ending and introducing the brand new but not supposed to be ending in which Professor Krupp was fired (which sounds awesome but which means that there was never a Captain Underpants–because if Krupp isn’t around, the kids can’t hypnotize him).

So when Tippy appears for the first time to enact revenge of Captain Underpants, well, there is no Captain Underpants.  Which also means that all of the times the Captain saved the day in previous books didn’t happen.  And so the Earth is not such a nice place anymore and indeed, the horrible giant zombie nerds are now menacing everything.  And that’s the end, with Pilkey saying there will be no more Captain Underpants adventures…

except for the next one.  Which claims to be the final epic novel due out in January 2013.  Hey that was two months ago.  That means it’s out now!

So, um… the first thing I remember dreaming was being part of some conglomerate 5-part collaboration between five different YouTubers (including me) and WheezyWaiter. We were to make small little bite-sized video chunks with central-ish themes that were to be enjoyed altogether while narrated by Wheezy. I made some really small versions of the animated shorts I was making for this actual animation class to put up every day, and acted alongside WheezyWaiter as he did the interlude banter that went in-between every five of the YouTuber’s segments. In one of them, I was stuck in a very cramped space that seemed a little like the house-equivalent of a cardboard box. I was eeven feeling a little claustrophobic about it as I attempted to peer at Craig’s text message to me as he shoved his phone with a “text message alert that he couldn’t deliver out loud about him needing my files” up to the peephole in the room. The other segment I remember was a very condensed version of Ellie Heart by DFearStudios– with more of a cyberpunk influence, where things were both old-fashioned yet considerably more cybernetic. And also, it was about the way that Dom and Seth’s characters influenced and perceived Ellie. … so… Ellie Heart meets Ruby Sparks meets Steam Powered Giraffe.

Mm.

And through the highly contemplative piano music in Ellie Heart, Craig/Wheezywaiter was inspired to upload a condensed version of the slam poem I did– with zee’ musicks in the back. And it even got noticed by DFear afterwards, saying the score was very much what they’d been trying to capture in their own. (Sire Dominic is truly this nice in the reals life.)

But, I mean, this isn’t the important stuff.

Keeping on with the “not important stuff” (which is everything, by the way), this five-member conglomerate thing that was supposed to go on every day into the conceivable future fused with my animation program, and it became a daily effort to produce great work among all my beautiful cohort classmates. And — well, okay, basically, one of my classmates stopped attending due to self-worth issues (not someone who ACTUALLY stopped attending), one of my other classmates was remarkably down about it… REMARKABLY… and when he suddenly showed up again, she started to run away, like she was ashamed of the way she felt– how much she cared. But I held her back for a moment as she stood out in the wind-ly, rain-ly hallway (that actually resembled the outside of my highschool cafeteria more), and told her that it was okay to miss him– it was okay to feel this way. Because, hey, people miss people, people want to be with people, that’s how people work– through relationships. And we’re all in there to have these relationships as we aspire– we’re all here to be vulnerable, both as people and as artists… hiding those feelings isn’t going to make anything any betterrrr… BUUUT what I didn’t know was that she was in LOOOVE with him– and she got down to his level as he sat there and she EMBRACED HIM WHOAAAAAH. And then they eventually (you know, because time is far too über-relative in la-la land) got married. In class… as a symbol of their undying love. For each other. And technology. (always and forever?) WHOO BOY, the joy I receive from seeing people in love! Go GET’IM, gurl!

And then something about Harold going out on a date with Big Patty and then getting in a fight with an older Angelica over him. (GET IT!? Because there’s a person in Rugrats AND Hey Arnold! called Harold!!! HAROLD!!! HAROLD!!!) And then they started singing about it. It was a good song. Comparable to Island Princess from Rugrats Go Wild. And that is a very good song, mind you, thanks to the Mothersbaughs.

And then something about me hanging out with a really creepy version of “Weird Al” Yankovic. (I don’t understand– this is the second stinking time I’m dreamt about meeting “Weird Al”– and it’s been remarkably negative. Which is wierd [[anti-Weird]] because, like, I like, LOVE-like-love Weird Al.) But yeah, he like, forced me into doing crazy dangerous drugs with him. But thankfully, he did it first, and he was so out of it that I didn’t have to do it. And then began to say he loved me and singing I Love You from Barney to me. While poking and groping me really hard all over my chest and stomach. It was so scary. So. Scary. One of the worst moments that I’ve ever felt in a dream, as he stood over me all predator-ily-like.

But yeah. So that was over with, and sooner or later, I was in this old park-playground area that I used to go to a lot when I was little. It’s kind of hidden away from the rest of the world– or at least that’s how it always seemed to me. There’s a huge tree there that covers everything with shade and with the hush of rustles, and it’s always nice and cool there, along the running hills and the soft, dewy, sea-green grass. So yeah, I was there, and I was with a group of my friends from the cohort, and… well, SUPPOSEDLY Amanda… Supposedly Amanda was there with me– this is where we’d decided to go to meet. But… she was surprisingly scarce for the next hour of my dream, as me and my friends walked around and goofed off and had some “real talk” (hahahhh) and– for whatever REASON– found out that a theatre was nearby right up behind one of the hills. Little Women was playing. There were some fantastic actresses walking around that totally decided to act out scenes with me and poke some good new-fashioned fun at everything. But I felt awful, overall, because I had this overwhelming sense that something was keeping Amanda and I apart. I kept asking about her, looking for her, attempting to visualize what it is she looked like, because my mind seemed to be failing there– with only blurry imprints of her visage under the dim lighting of the desk lamp in my head. And I just needed– SO badly to find her, because it felt like as the night went on, and everything got darker, and everything got more beautiful with the sudden illumination of moonlight and streetlamps, that I was missing my last chance to meet Amanda. I ran away from the theatre where the rest of my friends were planning to watch Little Women and went back down to the park, which was almost empty now. I wanted to end the night right there standing beside her… I looked down at the picture I’d taken of my friends and her earlier, and even there, as I looked at what was supposed to have been her, I felt the sudden strong rush of fear that she had been taken out of the picture and replaced with someone completely different. –In-fact, through my blurry dream vision that selectively chooses details, it was almost as if there was just a big vacant space where she was supposed to be. It was like someone was literally trying to keep me from finding her.

But then, suddenly, I received a package. I still have no idea how or when in my dream it happened. It just… WAS all of a sudden, and it was from her. I was really confused. I almost discarded it because, sheesh, she’s right here– wherever HERE is, and I’m going to find her before it’s too late– who cares about a THING, no matter how wonderful, when I can actually hold her close?! But– I found myself turning through the pages of the spiral-bound manuscript that was within… … and… not only did it have a beautiful letter on the front by her, but it the rest of it was a production notebook from Shuffle. Which– by itself, is only just nice… Not to belittle it– because SURE, I’d freak out and love it to death. I’m just saying it’s just a notebook. But… right then and there, I knew Amanda had gotten through this barricade of whatever was messing with us being together in order to give this as a message to me that she was still out there. That– she was thinking of me, really about ME.

And that means everything to me. My heart swelled with music (THIS music from Dear Zachary, in-fact!) and I ran, chest pounding, eyes so blurry with tears I couldn’t see in-front of me…

… smiling.

For most of us, palindromes are just something we learn about one day in school. The teacher writes “race car” on the board, explaining that the phrase is the same backwards as forwards; minds are temporarily blown; and then everyone goes about their lives. But for true palindromists, crafting these linguistic mirror images is an obsession. And they’re about to test their best creations in a competition judged by the likes of crossword guru Will Shortz and “Weird Al” Yankovic.

The first annual SymmyS awards for “outstanding palindrome achievement” were organized by stand-up comedian Mark Saltveit, who runs the online Palindromist magazine out of Portland, Ore. The prizes for this painstaking battle of the wits are bragging rights and pencils decorated with author Jon Agee’s palindrome “Todd erases a red dot.” Unlike another palindrome showdown held last year, there was no time limit on entries. Hundreds of submissions were narrowed down to 40 finalists, ten in each of four categories: long, short, poetry and word-unit (i.e. palindromes that reverse words rather than letters, like “All for one, and one for all!”).

The criteria for judging were left up to the judges, whom we surveyed via email. Their ranks will determine a winner in each category and an overall champ. “Weird Al,” who names “Oozy rat in a sanitary zoo” as a personal favorite, says a winner should show a sense of humor or a spark of wit, as he did in his palindromic song “Bob,” which contains another renowned Agee line: “Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog.”
Many of the entries, anonymous until the winners are announced, certainly have a cheeky side. Take this submission:

A slightly violent to-do list
Tape Roger.
Go “Bang!”
Get Cello.
Collect egg.
Nab Ogre.
Gore Pat.

Will Shortz, famed editor of the New York Times crossword, says that beyond humor, “The most important criteria for a palindrome are sense and naturalness of syntax.” Classics like “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama” belie how difficult it is to make even a moderate amount of sense in a palindrome. Shortz says this is his favorite palindrome, and the longest one he’s ever seen that is generally coherent:

“T. Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad. I’d assign it a name — gnat-dirt upset on drab pot toilet.”
Cohering can be easier in word-unit palindromes. Take this sportsman-friendly finalist: “Fishing for excuses? No need. You need no excuses for fishing.” Many of the entries take more brain power to read, such as this poem entitled “Internal Terrorism”:

Doom? Reward?
A maniac ire made target.
Ah, a mix — a mania, terror on Ohio.
I honor or retain a maxim:
“A hate grated America in a mad, rawer mood.”

Palindromist and judge Jeff Grant says he’s also looking for a “natural” quality in palindromes, as in one of his favorites: “Sex at noon taxes.” Comedian Jackie Kashian, who hosts the podcast “The Dork Forest,” says she’ll be looking for depth, though she also loves the simplicity of creations like “evil olive.” Other judges include comedian Demetri Martin and musician John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants.

To some, the amount of time and effort it takes to craft a palindrome may seem like a waste. But they are the perfect circles of wordplay, nerdy gems that illustrate the potential of our language. “The writing of a brilliant palindrome is a small miracle,” Yankovic says, “and that, I think, deserves to be honored more than a lot of the stupid and inconsequential things we often celebrate in our culture.” The winners will be announced this weekend in Portland and on the Palindromist’s website. A press release from organizer Saltveit notes that the awards ceremony will be modeled after the Oscars, though any offensive musical numbers will be limited to singular “boob” references.

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/06/madam-im-adam-palindrome-masters-go-head-to-head-in-championship/#ixzz2N9GpKhI8

SOUNDTRACK

Despite how much I loved Weird Al, I turned up my nose at this album when it came out.  I distinctly remember seeing it in the Ridgewood books and records store (records in the basement) where I bought my vinyl and dismissing the platter.  It’s a little unfair to have dismissed it based on the cover since Al was all about the accordion but I thought it was a serious polka album and I was too cool by half for that nonsense.  Interestingly, the album sold very very poorly, and I’m not sure if it was because of the cover.

As a result I don’t really know these songs all that well.  Those first three discs I listened to all the time but I didn’t get this one till much much later.  And it seems that four albums so quickly may have sapped some of Al;s creativity or at the very least eroded the good songs to parody (his more recent releases come every three years or so and they are really solid).

“Living with a Hernia” I like because the video is funny, although I did not care for the original.  ”Dog Eat Dog” is a Talking Heads style parody and it’s really good–sounds a lot like the Talking Heads, although I’m not sure it’s all that funny (at least not any funnier than a Talking Heads song). Sometimes the original songs that Al parodies are so bad that I don’t want to like the parodies.  ”Addicted to Spuds” is one of those songs.  The parody is very funny, but I hate the original so much that I can’t entirely enjoy this song.  ”One of Those Days” is another of his earlier generic rockers (piano and simple structures that don’t lend itself to a lot of fun) and lyrically, it’s a little blah.  ”Polka Party!” is what the album was named for and it’s another medley of tracks.  Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” sounds so different here, totally removed from it’s original music.  It’s amazing, though, how many of these original songs I didn’t know (what was going on in 1986?).  I do like the little sneak of INXS.  This song is also the first one where Al’s lyrics became racey because of the songs that were so popular (“Nasty,” “Venus”).

“Here’s Johnny” is  parody of  a song I don’t know at all although I can tell immediately that he sounds just like the original–he manipulated his voice perfectly.    ”Don’t Wear Those Shoes” is another blah song.  Al tends to use really over the top violent imagery but it’s  unfortunate when it seems to be the only thing funny in a song like this one.  ”Toothless People” is a parody of “Ruthless People” which I don’t even remember being a song.  I don’t even remember the movie being all that popular.  I couldn’t even tell who the original was by even though Al is putting on a good voice (it was Mick Jagger).  ”Good Enough for Now” is a decent country song–pretty funny, and yet really not that far from country songs that you hear now (and maybe then, too–I’m not much of a country fan).

The lackluster side 2 is utterly redeemed by the fantastic and awesome “Christmas at Ground Zero” a stellar and hilarious song about nuclear panic it even includes a sample from Ronald Reagan (in the video).  Outstanding.

Overall this disc is pretty disappointing   Al took two years to make the next one and whatever he did on the break certainly worked because the next album was Even Worse!

[READ: January 22, 2013] The Adventures of Ook and Gluk Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future

This is a pretty surprising book.  It is drawn by George and Harold who made the hilarious Super Diaper Baby which was based on an incredibly childish premise.  But this book, even though the spelling is awful like when George and Harold make comics, is book is pretty smart and intense.  And very Zen.

So Ook and Gluk are cavemen.  They are in a tribe whose king is King Goppernopper (the fact that everyone gets his name wrong cracks me up, I love that kind of juvenile joke).  Goppernopper hates Ook and Gluk (the fact that he gets their names wrong and his minions help him to pronounce it is very funny as well).  Ook and Gluk rescue a dinosaur who is trapped in quicksand (and yes there is a scientists disclaimer that cavemen and dinosaurs did not live at the same time, but George and Harold offer a disclaimer that the scientist is dumb and their story tells the truth).  And the dinosaur and her baby (Lily) make the King look foolish.   The King promises revenge.

Which he gets in Chapter Two when a Goppernopper from the future comes back in a time machine to 500,001 B.C and steals natural resources from the cavemen (to sell at a huge profit in 2222 AD.  Future Goppernopper traps Ook and Gluk in the future and King Goppernopper promises to bring the rest of the cavemen to the future to work as slaves.

Ook and Gluk escape with the help of Mr Wong and his school of Kung Fu.  The kids stay with Mr Wong for years trying to be more zen.  There’s some heavy philosophy on this book and I wonder if Clark got any of it.  Mr Wong teaches them the way of peace”Those who kick butt are weak for violens has no mind (sic)”.  Also: “Those who truly desire peace must not carry weapons for the simple knife that cuts bread also cuts flesh.  The lowly axe that chops wood also chops bones.  And the common spear that kills fish also kill man.  Yet a man of peace must not be weak.  So every finger must become a dagger…every open hand an axe and every arm a spear”  It’s pretty deep stuff for a book with so many intentional spelling errors.

Ook and Gluk want to earn black belts, but can’t seem to master that final question “Who is the greatest man.”  When they do, they are free to go back and face Goppernopper.  But Goppernopper has robots, including a mechasauraus with facial recognition software (which Ook and Gluk use to very good effect in the end).  Not to mention in the future Goppernopper has kidnapped Mr Wong and his daughter and is holding them captive.

The resolution comes swiftly and it explores the “if you kill your grandfather you yourself will die” paradox.  (See, told you the book as deep).

I really enjoyed this book–it was quite deep and thoughtful and probably some kids’ introduction to Eastern thinking.  It wasn’t all that funny, although there are some great broken sign jokes and a whole mess of Flip-O-Rama.

The end of the book offers lessons in Cavemonics.  The book promises that the next Ook and Gluk will be Ook and Gluk JR.  According to Wikipedia, it is due out next year.

SOUNDTRACK: “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC-Dare to Be Stupid (1985).

After In 3-D, Al came out with Dare to Be Stupid the following year.  It wasn’t quite as big a hit as In 3-D, even though it had the Madonna parody as well as a couple of really great originals–”One More Minute” and “This is the Life” (as seen sometimes in Johnny Dangerously–not on the VHS version for legal reasons, although it is on the DVD).

“Like a Surgeon” wonderfully skewers Madonna–Al doesn’t often do women’s songs, but this one fits his range very well.  ”Dare to Be Stupid” is a Devo parody (well, more tribute as this is no weirder than any Devo song).  It’s a frenetic and wild song telling yo to do all the things that you were told don’t do.  Okay I can hear you now.

“I Want a New Duck” is a really lame lame parody.  It’s weird and while he fills out the nonsense pretty well, it sounds like he came up with the idea because nothing else sounded like Drug (the original is pretty stupid too, so there ya go).

But then there’s the sublime “One More Minute” a hilarious doo wop “love song” in which the backing band really shows off what they can do.  ”I’m stranded all alone in the gas station of love and I have to use the self station pumps” is absolutely hilarious and a completely under appreciated line.  “Yoda” is a good parody, one that has not only held up but has been resurrected with the new Star Wars franchise.

I never understood why they did a cover of George of the Jungle, but I never watched the show so it doesn’t have any meaning for me.  ”Slime Creatures from Outer Space” is a goof of a sci-fi song which doesn’t quite match the absurd heights of “Nature Trail to Hell.”  Al says that “Girls Just Want to Have Lunch” is his least favorite parody (the label asked him to do Cyndi Lauper) and it’s really not very good–again, the song was too goofy to mess around with that much, but even in his recording it’s not very convincing (and he returned to the hand farts) the way that he and the backing vocalists are singing even sounds like they are disdainful of the song.

“This is the Life” was commissioned for Johnny Dangerously and he really ups his game for it–lots of genre jokes and a really good quality of recording.  ”Cable TV” is a pretty uninspired song about TV (which is surprising given how many songs he has written about TV) which has an awful sax solo–joke or not it’s bad.  ”Hooked on Polkas” is the second of his mashups of songs.  The banjo version of “Sharp Dressed Man” is cool as is the use of the sounds from Yes’ “Owner of a Lonely Heart” there’s also some pop metal Twisted Sister and Quiet Riot–and where else would you hear Quiet Riot next to Frankie Goes to Hollywood?

All in all some hits and misses.  And yes, maybe this stuff was funnier  in the 80s?

[READ: February 22, 2013] Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People 

I can’t believe how much I enjoyed this story   The first few Underpants books were silly and a funny way to make a story about a guy in his underwear.  But as the series has progressed it has gotten far more complex with fascinating twists and recurring characters (and how does he keep a storyline fresh in his head three years later?).

So Booger Boy Part 2 actually ended in the middle of a cliffhanger (but this one is not a Part 3 because the Booger Boy is no longer relevant).  Rather, when we left George and Harold they were in the purple potty time machine with Sulu the hamster and Crackers the pterodactyl and they were hurtling…. somewhere.

When they exit the potty, they are in the library, but the library is full of books!  The exact opposite of their own school library (and the librarian is even holding a copy of Mommy has Two Heathers.  In fact everything is the opposite–the school is encouraging creativity  the teachers are nice and Principal Krupp is happy to see everyone   It’s really weird.  Especially when the boys see themselves across the school.   And they turn out to be…evil!  Yes Evil George and Evil Harold look like normal George and Harold do, but they do things that are evil (they change sign letters to read anarchy rules…yipes).

When George and Harold are not looking, Evil George and Harold steal Sulu and Crackers (who were in a locker) and leave a copy of their comic book: The Preposterous Plight of Captain Blunderpants.  It is like our heroes’ book except that Blunderpants is evil.  It’s also opposite because by pouring water over their principle, he turns into the evil Captain Blunderpants, but snapping your fingers makes him nice again. Remember that now.  (Also, the spelling is better and the drawings in the comic are far neater too–clearly they are evil!).  The evil boys turn Sulu evil, but Crackers escape from the machine and rescues George and Harold.  Crackers flies them to the potty where they head back home (and Evil George, Evil Harold, Nice Mr Krupp and Evil Sulu get sucked into the blast as well and are transported back to the real timeline.

Everyone is back to the rule world and here we get ANOTHER comic book!  George and Harold made a comic for their grandparents called The Adventures of Boxer Boy and Great-Granny Girdle in which old people kick butt (with hard candy).  Remember that now.

The evil team has arrived and are planning to do their evil deeds.  There’s some fun when Captain Underpants fights Captain Blunderpants and the same triggers act differently to both Captains.  And real fun when George keeps telling Harold to stop saying that things are fine now!–no good ever comes from that!

The Flip-O-Rama arrives when the evil boys make Sulu 400 times his size and he and Captain Underpants fight.  Another Flip-O-Rama comes with the surprise return of unexpected superheroes.  And a final one (which is very funny since it’s only one comic) shows George and Harold spanking their evil twins.

But the big surprise comes when a part of super large pants walks into frame.  The zipper opens and out pops Professor Poopypants (which makes everyone laugh).  He yells that he changed his name to Tippy Tinkletrousers (that doesn’t make it any better).  But he has a freeze ray and what’s surprising is that he freezes the policemen and starts chasing George and Harold.  And that’s the end, getting us ready for Book Nine!

]]> http://richhorton.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/ideas-accordion-to-me/ Fri, 08 Mar 2013 13:10:54 +0000 riftyrich http://richhorton.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/ideas-accordion-to-me/

So at one time I had this great idea to create some cards and unique products to sell. This was long before Etsy and all the crafter stuff. I don’t think I came up with the Accordion to me until a later time though. I got the image from an old dictionary a long time ago. I like the name and image, it’s catchy. I have some of the product ideas which I will post later. One of them was called magic beans. They are  hilarious. You will just have to trust me on that one.

And thanks, Dangerous Minds, for this post.

SOUNDTRACK

After Al’s debut he came roaring back the next year with In 3-D a disc which opens with his first Michael Jackson parody “Eat It.”  The song was leaps and bounds above anything on the debut (even if there are still hand farts in it).  The song actually sounds like the original (if a little less “full” and a little goofier and on the whoo hoos).  But the solo by Rick Derringer rocks and the whole song works very well.  The rest of the album is a solid mix of originals and parodies

I didn’t really understand that “Midnight Star” was meant to parody the Weekly World News and such (I didn’t really know those papers at the time) but I thought the headlines were funny.  And yes its a lot of fun to sing a long to.  It’s always funny when Al parodies a song that is already rather stupid (My Sharona, or in this case Safety Dance), and “The Brady Bunch” opens with a general overview of stupid TV shows and then morphs into the The Bunch’s theme song to the music of “Safety Dance.”  ”Gonna Buy Me  A Condo” is a reggae song which I never really got the joke of as a kid.  I mean, I knew it was reggae but I didn’t know enough about reggae to know that this song is kinda funny, about selling out for the mainstream life.  It’s not genius or anything but it’s kinda funny–in fact I think it’s funnier now than I ever did as a kid.

“Jeopardy” works perfectly as a parody.  It retains all of the weird sounds and “drama” of the original and yet it works entirely unto itself.  It’s definitely an early highlight.  This disc also introduces what would be come a staple on all his later albums:  ”Polkas on 45″ where he mashes together a string of songs into a polka beat.  They are always fun and clever.  This one is a mix of new wave and classic rock bands Devo, Deep Purple,  Berlin, The Beatles,  The Doors,  Iron Butterfly, Jimi Hendrix, Talking Heads, Foreigner, The Police,  The Clash,  Rolling Stones,  and The Who.

“Mr Popeil” is another one that I didn’t full get until later (why did i like Al if I didn’t get any of the jokes?).  Ron Popeil is the king of the As Seen on TV  product (as listed in the song).  The thing that I really didn’t get was that this is was a parody of the B-52s–one of the first parodies he’d done that’s a parody of band but not really a song.  This is not a parody of Rock Lobster exactly, but it sounds quite a lot like it–and that’s a neat trick.

“King of Suede” is a parody of The Police–I never really liked it even though it does work as a parody–perhaps the original isn’t a very string song.    ”That Boy Could Dance” is instantly forgettable, so much so that I had forgotten all about it.  ”Theme from Rocky XIII” is a pretty funny parody of “The Eye of the Tiger.”  But it doesn’t prepare you for the genius that is “Nature Trail to Hell.”  An epic song about horror movies with the great line “if you lie the 6 o clock news you’ll love Nature Trail to Hell (in 3D).”  It’s over the top and very silly–the music escalates  with screams and strings and several different sections (although the solo section is a little anemic).  I can’t imagine what he would do with it today if he rerecorded it.

So In 3-D was a big jump in quality for “Weird Al” and was actually a pretty big hit (charting at #17).

[READ: February 22, 2013] Captain Underpants and the Big Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy Part 2

Since it is 2013 and not 2003, I don’t have to wait several months for Part 2.  Huzzah!

The opening comic in this book not only gives all of the Captain Underpants background that it usually does, it also includes what happened in Part 1.  At the end of the book, the robotic booger monsters (Carl, Trixie and Frankenbooger) were on the attack.  They destroyed the Combine-O-Tron 2000 so it would not reverse the effects of the machine on Captain and Melvin.  But Sulu the hamster rescued them by hurling the boogers into space (with his mouth, ew).

The boys want to get things back to normal.  But Professor Krupp (who is in Melvin’s body) is going about his business getting everyone in trouble.  Except that since he looks like Melvin people are getting angry at him rather than listening to him.  This book features a wonderful letter swap from “Check out our school’s big internet website at http://www.jhes.com”; to “We shake our big butts when we swim in the toilet.”

The boys give up on trying to fix the Combine-O-Tron and decide to use the Purple Potty Time Machine that is in the library and go back in time.  There’s a great sequence in which the librarian has banned every book but one and I love the posters that are up encouraging the banning of books–it’s another awesome dig at those who censor.  And the librarian is named Miss Singerbrains.

The boys go back in time to the day before yesterday to get the Combine-O-Tron before it gets broken.  But complications occur so they go back in time further to grab a pterosaur which they ride on to catch up to Miss Singerbrains (naturally).  It looks like all will be well, but Melvin has switched things again and now when the machine works, Melvin gets all of Captain Underpants’ super powers (but his own brain back) and Captain Underpants has no powers at all!

The boogers which were launched into space crashed onto a space ship called the Poopsie (which Clark pointed out gets changed to oopsie after the boogers eat the P).   The spaceship is redirected home and when they land, the boogers come to fight the Captain.  Melvin won’t help because he is still mad at everyone.  So the Captain does the only thing he can: the underpants dance (in Flip-O-Rama).  This makes the boogers mad.  And from there we learn the solution to fighting boogers: Vitamin C!  I was also delighted that the squishies (from Part 1) proved to have a benefit–the pay off of that was awesome.

Melvin gets punished for his deeds and almost everything is back to normal.  But the story ends with the boys stuck in the purple potty…and there they go again.  If this was 2003, you’d have to wait THREE YEARS for the next book!

]]> http://ijustreadaboutthat.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/dav-pilkey-captain-underpants-and-the-big-bad-battle-of-the-bionic-booger-boy-part-1-the-night-of-the-nasty-nostril-nuggets-2003/ Sat, 02 Mar 2013 17:30:05 +0000 Paul Debraski http://ijustreadaboutthat.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/dav-pilkey-captain-underpants-and-the-big-bad-battle-of-the-bionic-booger-boy-part-1-the-night-of-the-nasty-nostril-nuggets-2003/ SOUNDTRACK: “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC-”Weird Al Yankovic” (1983).

I have evidently always loved parody.  When “Weird Al” first came out I heard about “Another One Rides the Bus” (from where?  where could I have heard about this in like 1981 or 1982, I didn’t know about Dr. Demento), and really wanted to hear it.  I knew (and loved) “Another One Bites the Dust” but I had no information about the “Weird Al” song.  And there was really no way to learn about it in 1982 or 1983.  My only source of record buying was Pathmark.  And asking the clerks for “Another One Rides the Bus” inevitably brought me to the Queen album.  I’m somehow astonished that even at the tender age of 13, I was more hip and indie than “mainstream records stores” (or at least Pathmark).

I’d be lying if I were to say that “Another One Rides the Bus ” has stood the test of time (although really, hand farts never go out of style).  Indeed, no matter how much I love  ”Weird Al” (and I have seen him on every tour  for the last several tours), that first album just doesn’t really do it for me anymore (although I know I loved it when I got it).  It may have something to do with the song parody choices or just the fact that I’ve heard them so many times.  But I think part of it is that Al has matured into a really consummate recording artist–his songs are as full and complex as the originals he parodies (and his originals are comparably full).  By contrast, this first album is very sparse–focusing on the accordion and sound effects more than trying to recreate the song.  And hey, I know he had no budget, it’s totally understandable.  It’s just that now all these years later, it sounds more like a demo than anything else.

I also have to wonder if I ever thought these songs were actually funny–at this point Ricky seems just as preposterous a song as Mickey (And, yes, Ricky is better).  ”I Love Rocky Road” holds up better than “Ricky” (hand farts you see) and is actually better than the original too.  ”Stop Dragging My Car Around” is a pretty funny parody in theory–I like the idea of deflating the original, although I’m not sure that the new lyrics actually work.  There’s some funny car jokes, but I’m not sure that the chorus is actually right.  I do love the way Al plays with his voice (and the backing hey hey heys are great).  Somehow “My Bologna” still holds up surprisingly well–certainly as good as the original.

Al’s originals are a mixed bag.  I’ve always loved “Gotta Boogie” even if I didn’t quite get the double meaning until a few years after hearing it.  ”Buckingham Blues” is a weird topic choice, although I guess the Charles and Diane wedding was a big enough deal to mock it.  ”Happy Birthday” is a pretty funny song and it could easily stand up to a re-recording.  (Lyrically the song is very dark and not really kid-friendly (birth and death and all that).  ”The Check’s in the Mail” is another song I didn’t “get” until many years later–why would I know these business cliches?  Nevertheless, I knew the words quite well and think of it whenever I hear someone spouting a cliche.  ”I’ll Be Mellow When I’m Dead” is a fun song that mocks the “self-help” scene.  This was probably funnier for older people who might actually know what he’s talking about (Like wow, man can you relate).  But even if you don’t get all the references, the chorus is sure fun to sing along.  The lyric, “I don’t want no part of that vegetarian scene” is a funny line since he is a vegetarian (although I don’t know when he became one).  Musically it’s interesting though because he throws different styles of music into the one song, something he would definitely play with later.  ”Such a Groovy Guy”  tries a little too hard.  And the final song “Mr Frump  in The Iron Lung” is just bizarre (and something I didn’t get for many many years–did they even still use iron lungs in 1983?)

In retrospect this isn’t a great indication of what Weird Al would eventually achieve, but there’s a lot of fun stuff and songs that I still remember the lyrics to thirty years later–not a bad thing at all.

[READ: February 22, 2013] Captain Underpants and the Big Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy Part 1

Every Captain Underpants book ends with “Here we Go Again” and an assumed next book.  But this is the first book in the series that ends with an actual stated next part (see title).  This is also the first book where events of the previous book impact this one.  Ms Ribble is still nice!  And she is still making cookies every day.

Two things struck me in this book: the language that Pilkey uses is a little more difficult.  He’s using bigger words and some harder ideas and I wondered if the audience was getting older with Pilkey or if he just wanted to stretch his audience a bit.  Conversely, George and Harold’s spelling is getting worse.  It initially bothered me that their spelling was so bad (I don’t want kids to learn bad habits), but now Pilkey points out how bad their spelling is and it is so bad (they spell “once” wrong), that I guess it’s more funny than anything else.

This book also introduced me to squishies.  I don’t know of this prank ever took off in schools  but of all the things that this series had done that might get parents upset, squishies has to be the worst.  Basically you put packs of ketchup under the toilet seat so when someone sits on it–splat.  I could see that catching on and causing a lot of trouble.

The bad guy in this book proves to be uber-geek Melvin Sneedly.  Melvin has a appeared before.  He is a rule-follower and a tattle-tale.  He’s also really smart and makes cool inventions like the Combine-O-Tron 2000 (it cracks me up that every thing is still “2000″ even though the books were written in 2003).  The Combine-O-Tron in this case combines a hamster and a robot to make a cyborg hamster.  But the kids in class are too interested in squishies to care about this cool cyborg.  Which really angers Melvin.

Melvin gets mad at the hamster (named Sulu) and goes to punish him, but the cyborg animal gets the first Flip-O-Rama as he paddles Melvin!  This gives George and Harold a good idea–they make a comic out of Melvin.  It’s the last straw.  Melvin decides to use his Combine-O-Tron 2000 to turn himself into a cyborg.  And it works!  Except that Melvin sneezed just as the machine worked and he became a cyborg booger boy.  When he comes to school the next day he gets a chapter devoted all to the way he looks (“The Unnecessarily Disgusting Chapter”) which is so gross that George tells the narrator to stop taking about how gross he is.

Melvin is a gross creature and he is now sort of king of the school because he can do pretty much whatever he wants as no one will touch anything he touched.  But on the school field trio to Mr Snoddy’s Tissues, we learn that the tissues start to make Melvin grow and he quickly becomes a dangerous menace.  Then it is Captain Underpants to the rescue!  He does a great job and saves a lady who gives him a wet sticky boogery kiss.  As well all know wetness turns the captain back into Mr Krupp.  Uh oh, suddenly we’ve got an angry Mr Krupp in his underwear and a robotic Melvin on the loose!  It all looks hopeless until a return to Flip-o-Rama shows us how they escape.

The boys reverse Melvin’s machine (in a foolishly hilarious way).  And everything is back to normal.  Except…Melvin’s brain is in the Captain’s body and vice versa!  What will happen in part 2???

The title chapters in this book prove to be even funnier as well (if you know what he is parodying (like You Can’t Have Your Cake and Edith, too).  I think what’s especially fun about these books is that they are exciting and (as Clark put it) you don’t know if Captain Underpants is going to win.  Well, you do, but it’s fun to imagine what kind of crazy (or as he sometimes admits) lame and obvious (but also funny) way the boys win.

]]> http://ruffledcrow.com/2013/03/01/dont-download-this-song-weird-al-yankovic/ Sat, 02 Mar 2013 04:25:45 +0000 ruffled crow http://ruffledcrow.com/2013/03/01/dont-download-this-song-weird-al-yankovic/ From “Weird Al” Yankovic‘s album Straight outta Lynwood. Animated by Bill Plympton.

-Anonymous

 *~*~*

02-29-1984 (2:30 pm Pacific Standard Time)

to

05-30-2001 (5:47 am Pacific Daylight Time)

 *~*~*

This week would have been my late son, Keegan’s, 29^th birthday (or 7¼ years old, depending on how you look at it, since he was born on Leap Day).  I can’t believe it’s been that long since he was born, because he’s forever 17 in my mind.  Seventeen is how old he was when he died … and he died almost 12 years ago.  It seems like yesterday.  It seems like forever.

Keegan was born with Cystic Fibrosis.  I’ll describe that another time, but it’s a genetic disorder.  You can also look it up.  Keegan had a double lung transplant at the age of 16 at Stanford Hospital.  That was the best gift he ever received … the gift of life.  We are forever thankful to his donor family.

Right now … I’ll explain Keegan as a person, because he was truly an exceptional person.

*~*~*

Hmmmm … how do I explain Keegan?  Nothing can explain Keegan.  He was an entity and a force all on his own, with a will of iron, a desire to prove himself, and a personality that affected all of those around him.  He positively influenced people for the better more in his short 17 years of life than most people can in 100 years of life.  Even his newborn baby picture taken by the hospital showed how truly unique he could be.  I laughed till I cried when they sent this to us (since that was back before the instant digital picture).

WTF is THAT weird looking thing at the end of my arm?

Keegan loved life.  He loved to laugh.  He loved the absurdity of it all.  He played hard … he studied and worked hard in school … he was fiercely independent … and he was very proud of his brother, Logan, and his sister, Kara.  He fought to live life all the way to the end.  He was never a quitter.

So … what can we do to terrorize Mom today?

Keegan loved his 6 cats, Meower, Tabu, Bandit, Spike, Chewie, and Ewok, with a passion.  He loved Star Trek, Survivor, Taz, rollercoasters, and the music of the 60’s and 70’s … or music made famous by Dr. Demento and Weird Al Yankovic.  He wanted to graduate from Foothill High School in Pleasanton, CA, in the year 2002, along with the rest of his class, and he wanted to go to the University of Southern California, as had his maternal grandparents and his cousin, Chris, to study to be a lawyer.  He liked to tease his sister and his cousin, Allyson, about their “floofy hair”.  His family and his friends were his life.  He was, as are all my children, one of my best friends.

 Can your hair BE any floofier on this cruise?

Nevertheless, I think that one of the best ways to describe my beloved 2^nd child is in the words of some of his friends that emailed me a year ago on his “real” birthday, since it was a Leap Year last year.

*~*~*

Happy birthday Keegan. Technically, you’d be 28 today, but because you were a leap-year baby I’d be giving you a “Happy 7th Birthday!” card if you were still with us. Because we were in high school when you left this world, you’ll always be immortalized in my heart as the crazy green-haired kid under the tarp with our gaggle of friends, in the pouring rain, at the Santana concert… the “passenger” when we got kicked out of Walmart for “shopping cart racing” …and the kid with the “hot date” (aka your oxygen tank) when we played “Chinese Fire Drill” at the Fairgrounds’ drive-thru Christmas light show. You never missed a pre-dance dinner, even when your condition was too fragile to attend the actual school dances with us. You never burned me a mix CD without slipping the Mortal Combat theme song in there for no apparent reason. I still crack up when I hear that song. Thank you for all the awesome memories, and all the other stuff happening today that I’m going to credit to you. Let’s start with free pancakes today at Ihop. That totally sounds like your doing! Bizaar weather changes? Your mom is right: It’s all you, buddy! If Mortal Combat comes on over the radio today, I’ll send you a Twinkie offering via the microwave… which actually sounds like a pretty awesome thing to do anyway… Great. Now I have to call the radio station and make a request that’ll make me sound crazy. Thanks Keegan, you did it again! Miss you buddy!!

*~*~*

Dear Keegan, I would like to take this moment to thank you for being in my life. Impacting my views of friends and showing me that awesome people come in amazing packages. And for as far as I can tell starting my love affair with Pisces. Just wanted to let you know you will always be missed and thought of often and fondly. <3

*~*~*

Happy Birthday Keegan. You were one of, if not, my best and dearest friend in middle and high school. We shared so many memories and good times. I truly am a better person for knowing you. I happened to find an essay that I wrote about you in high school today and I will always remember your faith, love and respect. God Bless you my dear friend. Can’t wait to see you again someday – you better be waiting for me by the gates because I will be looking for you. I love you.

*~*~*

… a former teacher wrote:  I sang to him. <3

*~*~*

… a former teacher wrote: Even my students knew what day it was.  Amazing, the power an exceptional human being has to touch people forever.  Magic.

*~*~*

… a former teacher wrote:  I could not agree more.  Keegan did more in his few years than most of us ever hope to do in 80.  The fact that his birthday is a most unusual date was simply an early message of the legacy he would create.

*~*~*

As his mother, I sing to him every year.  I bake a cake for him every year (FunFetti because he loved that kind of cake).  He was born by emergency c-section on Leap Day, 1984.  Like I said in a prior blogpost earlier in the month, he was due on Valentine’s Day … but I knew by the way he felt during my pregnancy that it would either be Ground Hog’s Day or Leap Day.

It was truly Leap Day … and it wasn’t even planned that way.

He was and still is an exceptional and very old soul.  His spirit is an amazing force.

Celebrate the life he lived.  His wish is that we not be sad and somber for him, because, as he told us a long time ago, “If you’re sad, you aren’t being sad for me, you’re just being sad for yourselves because I’m off enjoying my new self.” 

Even when he died, he didn’t want a sad somber funeral or memorial service.  He wanted us to have something he would have enjoyed going to and to remember him as he was … full of joy and full of life and full of his own wicked sense of humor.

Celebrate Me

By Max, The Poet

Remember the good we shared,
In all you do.  Celebrate me!
Remember how I taught you things,
Like what our lives are meant to be.

Smile for me when you’re feeling blue.
Think only of joy when thoughts of me enter in.
Do not cry for me.
A new chapter in my life, do I begin.

I am certain that I’ll miss you.
Sure as snow upon the mountain,
My love for you will not end.
It pours forth from my heart’s fountain.

So, as you mourn, and begin to heal,
Remember always: it is you I adore.
Forever and ever, I am at peace.
Celebrate me, once more!

Keegan’s maternal grandfather used to tell us to “play the cards you’re dealt in life; enjoy the game while you’re in, and never ever ever fold.”  Keegan exemplified this spirit all the way to the end. 

Keegan’s desire to do everything on his own, even when he needed assistance, exemplified that.  I remember that, even when he was 2 years old and having difficulty dressing himself, he would shout “SELF!!!” when someone (generally me) tried to help him.  He’d make his entire body stiff as a board so that no one could help and so that he could do it on his own. 

Keegan definitely played the cards dealt in life all the way to the bitter end.  His Grampa Glenn and I continue to be proud of that fighter’s will, even with Grampa Glenn (my father) as well as Keegan both long-deceased from this life.

One of Keegan’s biggest fears was that he’d be forgotten after his death. 

Keegan, we will never forget you (how could we forget that goofy grin and giggle of yours as well as your multi-colored hair), and we will always love you.

Hmmmm … what weird color can I make my hair next?

Keegan, we again celebrate your joy in life and your will to live.  You even changed the life of Roy, who never had the pleasure of meeting you.  He is influenced by your strong presence and spirit.  Your joy and your will carry on.

I think, laddie, that I’ll do a jig for you now.

*~*~*

www.keeganfund.org

This is the memorial scholarship fund in his name.  It will be changing focus this year to a slightly broader base, but this will give you the idea of what he was like.

*~*~*

I will miss you forever and always, baby boy … and I will miss your gravelly voice, your deep guttural laugh, and your million dollar smile.

Ok, Mickey, let’s get this boat moving now. 

I know it was already there in a juvenile form during my teen years. I still vividly remember defending The Thin Red Line and 2001: A Space Odyssey on separate occasions in the school yard. I remember being accused of pretending to like them because I was “trying to sound smart” – an accusation that was only half true. I wasn’t pretending to like them, but like any teenage boy attempting to define himself by his newly discovered passions, I was definitely trying to sound smart. The truth was that I couldn’t have articulated what made these films interesting to me at the time, it was more their implicit strength, dignity and mystery that I understood than any kind of textual meaning.

I know it was already there in my primary school years. In fact, I remember that this was when I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. My father told me to watch it, and by the end I was totally lost in its graceful calm, ghostlike machinery and transcendent imagery. What was it about, exactly? My father told me that nobody really knew. I found this answer totally unsatisfying and attempting to answer it was probably my first introduction to truly engaging with the form.

Aside from this one particular expedition into the unknown, my younger years were primarily about a total obsession with Stallone, Norris, Van Damme, Robocop, and most importantly, Schwarzenegger. The first time that my parents placed their hands over my eyes as Uncle Arnie (a handle applied by my father that led me to believe Arnie and I were related) came across the skinned corpses in Predator, I knew that the moving image would provide me with an endless window into an array of visual stimulations – both fantastic and horrifying – that I would be unlikely to find anywhere else. It seems my parent’s lacklustre attempts at censorship had a counterproductive effect, because up until my early twenties I had something of an obsession with morbidly ensuring that I had seen everything which pushed the furthest boundaries of decency, or perhaps indecency (90% of which seemed to come from Italy – it was Rogero Deodata’s Cannibal Holocaust that horrified me enough that I would abandon this particular channel of filmic interest for all time). This is not an uncommon trait amongst younger cinephiles.

My conviction that such mature material was superior (well, I thought it was mature at the time), led me to the pretentious belief that cartoons and kid’s books were for the inferior child. This quickly resulted in constant trips to the video store to borrow piles of horror and action films that I should not have seen, as well as in my reading the entire collection of Stephen King books that my parents had amassed over the years. Soon enough, I found myself becoming a schoolyard expert on all things grotesque and inappropriate. I was that odd boy who drew pictures of monsters being eviscerated while the others drew flowers. I was the boy whose short stories always involved traps, explosions, and inevitably the deaths of all the main characters. I was, in fact, the boy you didn’t want your boy to play with.

But it goes back earlier than that, I think. As a younger child, I was rarely able to sleep peacefully through the night. I had a fear of the dark, most especially in the later hours of the night when I could hear that my parents were asleep and that I was essentially alone in the universe. As a result, I would often be kept up by horrible images I’d seen on television, and occasionally they would result in rather vivid nightmares. Here, I’ll attempt to catalogue a handful of the moments that left an inedible scar on my childhood:

Untitled film

There was a film I saw glimpses of as a child, peeping around the corner as my parents watched it on television (I suspect it was Japanese). A woman is having the image of a spider tattooed on her arm – involuntarily, I believe. The tattoo begins to crawl up her shoulder then neck. In my memories, the bite that occurs moments later results in some Exorcist style projectile vomiting – but this may be an addition I have made to my memory over time. Whatever this film was, it haunted me for years to come. If you know, please tell me.

Twin Peaks

I had a regular nightmare that started occurring after seeing something bizarre on television as a child – a man appearing from behind a curtain with clearly malign intent. It was not until I was in my twenties that I discovered that this was a scene (not a particularly scary one) from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, involving the character of Leo.

Weird Al Yankovic – I’m Fat

If you can believe it, I once had a horrifying nightmare as a young child that involved the gang from Weird Al Yankovic’s I’m Fat kidnapping me as I walked down a main street in Melbourne, Australia (Chapel Street, for those in the know). My mother kept walking, apparently unable to hear my screams for help. How embarrassing.

 Blue Velvet

It might seem unlikely that a filmmaker whose work appears to take place in a kind of surreal dream space would happen to have infected my own thoughts as a child on two occasions, but it is true. Like Twin Peaks, it was only years later when I was going through the obligatory David Lynch phase that I discovered the “Love Letter” scene in Blue Velvet was one that I happened to see as a child. It didn’t result in any nightmares that I can recall, but it did prevent me from getting to sleep at night for a long time.

The Wizard of Oz

This one is probably fairly standard but it definitely messed me up as a child. The film would roll along so well and I’d be having fun, but every time the witch would show up my heart rate would go through the roof. Definitely kept me up on multiple occasions.

Very little has been accomplished here beyond me discovering that this piece of writing is significantly more morbid than I intended it to be when I began. I suppose the conclusion I would have to come to is that my passion for cinema began with a strange curiosity about the things that most terrified me as a child, and a desire to conquer those things by not turning away. Or maybe not…

Teaser Photo:

via AfterElton.com http://www.afterelton.com/2013/02/the-experts-game-show

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Curiosity, for example, is awesome, and citizen science can help pique it. Also, helping kids develop the skills they will need to ultimately enter a scientific career.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology highlights some of its citizen science projects, with particular focus on their use in education.

Citizen science results: The effect of climate change on butterfly flight; finding “lost” plant species.

New (to me) citizen science projects: Uncover Your Creeks (water quality monitoring in Vancouver, British Columbia); Secchi App (a worldwide phytoplankton study).

Miscellaneous birding tidbits.

Steven Brust sends an open letter to his editor. It’s funny.

Also funny: Weird Al Yankovic’s set-up for teaching his daughter the piano. If I ever teach music, I’m going to replicate this.

I am so glad that I finally got a chance to use my stock Weird Al picture.

Forget about the breakup rumors: Rihanna is celebrating her 25th birthday in Hawaii . . . with Chris Brown.  And they were spotted cuddling and holding hands on the beach.

Ron Jeremy is out of the hospital and on the mend after suffering a heart aneurysm last month.  He’s even eating healthy, which he says is, quote, “depressing, but it’s keeping me alive.”

The Oscars will not be called the “Academy Awards” any more.  The Academy decided to “rebrand” the show by just calling it “The Oscars”.

Mark Hamill says George Lucas is, quote, “talking to us” about returning for “Star Wars 7″.  By “us”, we assume he also means Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher.  He also said that if any of them decide not to, their roles WON’T be recast.  Their characters would then just be written out of the story.

Mel B. . . a.k.a. Scary Spice. . . will take Sharon Osbourne’s seat at the judges’ table on “America’s Got Talent”.  She’ll sit alongside Howard Stern and Howie Mandel.

“Star” magazine claims Britney Spears doesn’t even sing on her own albums anymore. Britney’s camp hasn’t commented.

It looks like Lady Gaga is doing good after going under the knife for her hip injury., has gone under the knife.

Weird Al Yankovic says the only person who has said no “consistently” to his parodies is . . . Prince.  But he doesn’t mind because there are plenty of other artists who “HAVE a sense of humor.”

I am so glad that I finally got a chance to use my stock Weird Al picture.

Forget about the breakup rumors: Rihanna is celebrating her 25th birthday in Hawaii . . . with Chris Brown.  And they were spotted cuddling and holding hands on the beach.

Ron Jeremy is out of the hospital and on the mend after suffering a heart aneurysm last month.  He’s even eating healthy, which he says is, quote, “depressing, but it’s keeping me alive.”

The Oscars will not be called the “Academy Awards” any more.  The Academy decided to “rebrand” the show by just calling it “The Oscars”.

Mark Hamill says George Lucas is, quote, “talking to us” about returning for “Star Wars 7″.  By “us”, we assume he also means Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher.  He also said that if any of them decide not to, their roles WON’T be recast.  Their characters would then just be written out of the story.

Mel B. . . a.k.a. Scary Spice. . . will take Sharon Osbourne’s seat at the judges’ table on “America’s Got Talent”.  She’ll sit alongside Howard Stern and Howie Mandel.

“Star” magazine claims Britney Spears doesn’t even sing on her own albums anymore. Britney’s camp hasn’t commented.

It looks like Lady Gaga is doing good after going under the knife for her hip injury., has gone under the knife.

Weird Al Yankovic says the only person who has said no “consistently” to his parodies is . . . Prince.  But he doesn’t mind because there are plenty of other artists who “HAVE a sense of humor.”

]]> http://stylelinkin.com/2013/02/21/bonnaroo-lineup-announced/ Thu, 21 Feb 2013 09:46:54 +0000 gmursano http://stylelinkin.com/2013/02/21/bonnaroo-lineup-announced/

This year’s Bonnaroo lineup was announced in a unique way: via a live stream on Bonnaroo’s YouTube channel, hosted by none other than… ”Weird Al” Yankovic. He helmed a very ”Al TV”/UHF-style variety show involving various comedians and silly gags.

Here are some of the main artists:

Paul McCartney, Animal Collective, Wilco, Björk, Earl Sweatshirt, R. Kelly, Wu-Tang, the National, the xx, Kendrick Lamar, Passion Pit…

Read More.