A Song Using Only Sounds From Windows XP and 98

Neato.

David Lee Roth "Runnin' With The Devil" Vocal Track

There is absolutely no reason why this should be so funny:

Winner of the Bad Music Contest - NO ONE

Well, thanks for listening and voting, everyone. But it seems that between the 4 to 4 votes and the swing votes going "undecided," we have no true winner in the First Official Sloan and Elizabeth Bad Music Contest. Here's the final tally:

Votes for "Cheese Purse of Freedom" -
1 Nick
2 Shan
3 Anonymous
4 Keef

Votes for "The Gerbil Klaxon Terrible Music Project" -
1 Anonymous
2 Luis
3 Dan Telfer
4 Mercy

Undecided weenie butts -
1 KDuck
2 Grant Miller
3 Chancelucky

But fear not! The creation of terrible, horrible art will not end here. Because of your indecision, Sloan and I have decided to enter round two of this tragic competition, and either 1. Remix each other's crappy songs, or 2. Make videos for each other's crappy songs. Stay tuned.

Baby gerbil photo from Cute Overload.

VOTE On The Sloan and Elizabeth Bad Music Contest

I brought my MacBook to my niece Sloan's (that's her at left) and we decided to have a contest to see who could use Garage Band to write the most horrible 60 second song in less than 30 minutes. For some continuity, both pieces have two elements in common: her saying "gerbil" and me saying "I don't want be in here." We ran off to separate rooms and got to work. Here's the horrible crap we came up with.

If you vote (in the comments section of this post), you also get to suggest what prize the winner gets. Apparently writing crappy music exhausted our creative reserves, because we can't think of an appropriate prize.

"The Cheese Purse of Freedom," by Sloan Taylor (1 minute, 16 seconds).

Special bonus points for use of phone jingle noise, "boi-oi-oing" noise, and for somehow conjuring up the ghost of 1986-era Don Johnson, even though Don Johnson's not actually dead yet.

"The Gerbil Klaxon Terrible Music Project," by Elizabeth McQuern (50 seconds).

Special bonus points for use of jingle bells, a klaxon, and the horns that show up in my ChUC theme song and everything else I write.

YouTube Has Never Made Me Cry

Until today. You must watch this. It's Paul Potts' audition for Britain's Got Talent, and it's just the most amazing, beautiful thing I've seen in a long time. A real triumph.

Great Caribbean Basin End of Summer Party

My brother threw his increasingly larger-scale End of Summer party despite the inclement weather. Lots of my friends were MIA. Didn't show up because you thought a little thing like a thunderstorm would stop us from celebrating? Wrong. My brother directs events on an Olympic scale, people. It was an amazing outdoor party under tents, with a live DJ, an unbelievable assortment of food and drink, little kids splashing through puddles, and fire-eaters as entertainment. Real Cuban mojitos, New Orleans jambalaya, Filipino wedding cake, and more.

Here's a two minute video I made. I wrote the music, too - it's a little mish-mashy but fun, sort of like the mix of cultures and food and music at the party. Sort of like my family, which we sometimes say is like one big living Benetton billboard -- except our sweaters aren't that nice.

The Internet Is a Useful Thing (For Once)

*My blog bud Collin over at Fizzle and Pop has started doing graphic design tutorials and putting them on his blog, explaining and demystifying the creative process as he goes. So cool! Of course, as you already know, I'm all about artists making the creative process transparent online, but I think this is especially cool. Once again, I have to ask: why aren't more people doing stuff like this? Imagine the practical and specialized knowledge that could be dispersed to all corners of the globe.



*My brother Andrew got a little industry attention for his Chicago Olympic direction efforts. Supposedly there's going to be something about him coming up in the Trib, as well.

*The Gongs, AKA my darling friend Brandi, are (is?) getting even more internet famous, thanks to the enchanting and infectious "The Dinosaur." First, there was the mention on Said The Gramophone. "So who are these people? Who are The Gongs? Let's make it up: they're three linguistics majors and a physics major. They're all taking a class on dinosaurs, because they like them. And they all have to do a presentation before the class on the subject of dinosaurs. And as they're meeting at the library one day the physics dude - who is a music-head, a dandelion, a wannabe indiepop star, - he convinces the linguistics girls to do a song..."

Now, The Stypod hearts "The Dinosaur" as well. "The dinosaur of the Gongs’s 'The Dinosaur' is a similarly peaceful creature: he 'won’t eat your friends' because 'he loves you'; he’ll even 'cook the food for the barbecue in your backyard.' Like those who explore the damp, tangled forests of the Congo, the Gongs—a girl named Brandi who doesn’t play a gong—are believers, and their work is a movement of faith. Both believe in the persistence of the past: certain things, they insist, certain things last, whether it is a creature whom extinction forgot or a childhood fantasy that never faded away..."

And approaching 3000 people have seen this cute video that a teenage girl made of her cat, set to a soundtrack of...yes, "The Dinosaur." AND, another popular music blog, catbirdseat, put "The Dinosaur" on the april 2007 mix and there's some more love here. And my friend Dan, who tells a dinosaur joke from time to time, is using the song on his MySpace.

*Also, this simply must be posted. Have you ever seen anything so awesome? That little tortoise is a bad ass hard-shelled little dude.

...Because I Love You Too Much, Baby

We are trucking along nicely with our sketch show at Second City. Here's the perfunctory MySpace page I slapped together for our show, which is now officially called "Brazilian Wax Museum." (An early prototype of our show poster is at left.)

Yesterday we writers sat in the dark at the back of Donny's Skybox, eating M&M's and giggling appreciatively as our director and actors worked on the choreography for our opening song, which is a ridiculous exploration of totally misinformed assertions about South America and its various cultures and traditions. (I know it sounds rip-roaringly hilarious, no? Of course, deconstructing comedy takes all the fun right out, so be happy knowing that you'll be able to see video clips of the show at some point in the near future, and you can see the funny as nature intended.)

Yesterday we also realized that every one of the Lisas in our group (two are actors, one is a writer) are all Lisa Maries, which opens up a lot of questions about the judgment of the parents involved. Yes, we get it folks, Elvis was great, but there are so many ways to go with honoring him with your baby daughter's name. How about Priscilla? Gladys? Yes, Gladys. That's what they should have gone with. The world needs more Gladyses. Gladys'. Wait, how do you pluralize Gladys? Gladysses? Whatever.

Columbia Journalism Review, Olympics, Opera, Dirty Snow Expressions

Columbia Journalism Review's website has quoted this very blog on the Lisa Nowak astronaut love triangle story. Wow! Maybe that three-week hiatus did me some good, after all.

My brother A. is doing some cool work related to Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics. I'm very proud of him and can't wait until I can share more details on that.

A friend has been named choral director of the Lyric Opera here in Chicago. Congrats to him.

In other news, it's still really cold outside. Negative two, as of a few minutes ago. On days like this in my former home in suburban Indiana, little kids made snowmen adorned with twinkly little charcoal eyes and brightly colored scarves. Here in Chicago, they use their mittens to etch genitalia into the thickly layered snow on parked cars. Ah...city life.

The Jim Jones Variety Hour

The other night some friends and I were chillin' after a nice Cuban dinner and caught the muted TV, tuned to PBS, out of the corner of our eye. We were mesmerized and puzzled by a musical performance that was absolutely uncatagorizable.

We sat down to watch. We turned the sound on.

"Is this religious? It looks like a cult recruitment video!"

"No, I think it's a children's concert."

"No, it looks Swedish or something."

"The singer looks like Raffi. This is for children."

"No, those giant bunnies would scare the shit out of children."

"This is actually scaring me a little bit. Change the channel."

"What the hell IS this?"

We couldn't look away. We couldn't google it, either. The wireless was on the fritz.

"It's the Jim Jones Jamboree!"
I asserted. 'Don't drink the Kool-Aid, children!" I then offered our
Cuban friends a brief explanation of who Jim Jones was, and the
contemporary meaning of the phrase "Drinking the Kool-Aid."

A song came on. We focused on the lyrics. "This will help us figure this out," we said. We turned on the closed-captioning.

"Oh Yoshimi, they don't believe me
but you won't let those robots eat me
Yoshimi, they don't believe me
but you won't let those robots defeat me"

Well, that didn't help.

Then the wireless came back online. We googled. It was the Flaming Lips on Austin City Limits. They, who regaled us with "She Don't Use Jelly" in 1993. Wow. I never would have figured that one out on my own.