Sean Daily is an English major from New Jersey now living in Las Vegas, the Other City of Lights. "I consider 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' to be comfort reading, I like the al pastor tacos at Tacos Mexico and I count among my literary influences the Chainsaw from 'Doom'. 'RRRRRR! You don't like that, do you, Mr. Undead Marine! RRRRRR!'"
Shanoah Alkire is our Discordian at large. "Born in Santa Cruz, I grew up in Grass Valley and the Bay Area, and now lurk in Las Vegas. My literary influences include Ray Bradbury,
Lewis Carroll, and Douglas Adams. I also program as a hobby,
and currently maintain the Gtk port of Angband. You can find
a rather old bio of me here."
I have mixed feelings about this song. The lyrics are kinda stupid, in the sense that the California wildfires are kinda warm. But the music is great. I don’t know what’s gotten into musicians over the last couple of years with their trying to sound like 1960s garage bands, right down to the electric pianos, but I like it.
Incredibly silly and fun video by fellow Danes Ohhmarymary (MySpace here) and courtesy of PlesPles. Apparently Snake and Jet took 13 of their songs and gave one at random to 13 different artists. Ohhmarymary got X-Ray, and I’m glad.
Heard this Friday on Scott William’s show on (you guessed it) WFMU. This is Current 93’s cover of Blue Oyster Cult’s (This Ain’t) The Summer of Love, with audio from a live performance and DIY video that would make it right at home on the TV over the Double Down Saloon’s bar here in Vegas, right in between the Spike and Mike’s cartoons and the movie trailers for The Worm Eaters. Courtesy of AntiMusick.
Since this is from Blue Oyster Cult, how about the original, live in 1976? Courtesy of Helminen1.
But isn’t this the summer of love yet? Not according to American Dog, sounding lo-fi, gritty and gross at another live performance, time in Belgium in 2008. Courtesy of dokidok.
All right, those of you that didn’t like the previous Jonathan Coulton songs I played can skip this post.
Because I’m starting to really like his music, and couldn’t resist sharing a few more.
Skullcrusher Mountain – Jonathan Coulton
This song is classic. It’s one of the few mad scientist love songs I have heard, and it’s so true to form it’s beautiful. And the chorus is great.
"Oh, and I’m so into you
But I’m way too smart for you
Even my henchmen think I’m crazy
I’m not surprised that you agree
If you could find some way to be
A little bit less afraid of me
You’d see the voices that control me from inside my head
Say I shouldn’t kill you yet"
Baby Got Back – Jonathan Coulton (cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot)
All right. Best Cover Ever. How on earth did he manage to sing “Baby got Back” as a sentimental ballad? If you ever wondered what a Kenny Loggins cover of that song would be like, I have to think it’d be rather similar to this…
Well, as usual, I put off posting until the last minute and then some today. So I was casting around for something quick to write, and I happened to notice that Delfwaren, a French CGI artist (or at least a CGI artist with a French e-mail address) left a comment about a post that I did in March about Renedevous with Rama. See, he did a computer-generated fly-though of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rama cylinder, to the tune of Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere.
That’s why Miserere is your neat thing today. MIserere – also Miserere mei, Deus - is a chroal adaptation of Psalm 51 (fully-leaded description from the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia here and text here). Now, as a red-blooded American and gnostic, I have a slight problem with the cringing I-am-not-worthy obsequiousness of this psalm. But it sounds nice and - if you ignore the writhing-in-the-dustness of the lyrics that make you want to scream “‘TIS BETTER TO REIGN IN HELL, MOTHAFUCKA!” – it’s very soothing and gets you in a spiritual mood very nicely.
This version of Miserere is courtesy of margotlorena and, because YouTube doesn’t like people uploading whole episodes of Lost and Those Who Hunt Elves, had to be broken into two parts. But it’s worth it.
And it comes with the lyrics, too! But it’s not English; they’re singing it in this, like, language. I think it’s Dutch. Or maybe Japanese. (On second thought, no, not Japanese. Not enough neko-chans)
You know, I’ve thought about that before myself, Sean, but I have a job here, and would prefer not to be looking for one, especially with the way the economy is right now.
If something did happen with my job, it’d be real tempting to move, though. Somewhere That’s Green, preferably. But I don’t feel like sequeing into the Little Shop of Horrors, so let’s play some music by Electric Light Orchestra:
Don’t Bring Me Down
This is such a fun song. Incidentally, a bit of trivia: In the chorus, they are actually singing “Don’t Bring Me Down; Groos!”. Due to many, many fans singing it as “Bruce!”, they now sing it that way themselves…
Jungle
All right, I like the song, but how long as Orchestra been spelled with a G?
BTW, I checked the visitors today. We had 76 as of 5 p.m. PDT. But then, that’s not unusual on Fridays and the weekends; people want to get up and away from their computers, unlike losers like me.
Besides, if I was truly worried about hits, I’d name this blog google.com or something.
You ever feel like the world that you’re in is a trap – a trap designed so cleverly and so cunningly that you can’t escape? Like you were dealt a losing hand at birth, only the people you despise got winning hands, and your hungers and desires and even ethics only serve to tighten the trap? I feel like that all the time, and I’m sure you’ve felt like that, too. (The Bush years have not been good to me)
I feel like all I need is one strong jolt of guts to quit my job, move out of the dust-washed bowl of the Vegas valley and get busy living. All I lack is the guts, but there’s the rub. Tasmanian Pain Coaster crystallizes that mood for me very nicely… but TPC’s turf isn’t the bucolic angsty suburbia that I hail from. El-P’s got real problems in this song. Perhaps you sould take a look at the lyrics here, as I did.
Oh, and if El-P sounds familiar, and you think you’ve read about him on this this blog before, well, you have.
I can sympathise about the dentist, Sean. There are a couple teeth I really need to have a dentist look at, actually. I keep missing making an appointment.
Pity I’ve already played “Dentist“, from Little Shop of Horrors here.
Anyways, time to revisit the 60’s yet again. What can I say; I’ve been enjoying hunting up old music and posting it, so hopefully all of you have been as well.
Thought it was worth pointing out that the Zombies had at least one good song besides “Time of the Season”.
If I can find a find a song other then the bands most well known song, I often prefer to play that instead, to make things interesting, and this was the Zombies first big hit. There are exceptions, obviously.
Well, One Neat Thing a Day has hit a milestone. We had over 100 visitors today!
These were the blog’s stats as of 5 p.m. PDT today, when the visitor counter resets. As you can see, One Neat Thing a Day had 103 visitors between 5 p.m. yesterday and 5 p.m. today.
We’ve already had a century day. But this time it’s special. That time, we played host to 116 visitors… but 97 of them had come for one post, which I’d published the day before the State of the Union address. Now, it’s spread all over the board:
In other words, we’re not a one-hit wonder. And we’ve already had 20 visitors as of 9:38 p.m. PDT, less than five hours after counter reset. I’d say the blogs is on its way to another hundred-visitor day, or close to it.
So thank you very much, everyone who’s visited and supported us, for pushing us past this milestone. It’s gratifying to know that so many of you are actually interested in what Shanoah and I have to say. Here’s hoping we’ll be around to thank you when we hit the millennium mark.
You know, sometimes the posts just write themselves. See, I had to have a molar removed today. I do have some sense, so I’ll spare you the horrific details. I’ll only say that, for much of today, I was in what doctors euphemistically call “some discomfort”, which led me to saying some things at work that I kind of regret saying right now.
So, what do you post on a day when you’ve had “some discomfort”? How about King of Pain from the Police? Courtesy of MProland.
I know, I know, and I shall be punished for that. I know this.
Or we could go with You Know You’re Right from Nirvana, if only for the chorus: “PAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNN”. Which is what I wanted to say at work, but I couldn’t, so I went instead with lots and lots of very bad words, which isn’t really much of an improvement.
The Novocaine is wearing off, and I’m starting to remember why I went to the dentist in the first place. Oh, if I had taken heeded this helpful PSA from Happy Tree Friends, called Nuttin’ Wrong with Candy, about the dangers of eating too many sweets! Courtesy of Mondo Media.
And this one, the logical followup to Nuttin’ Wrong with Candy, called Nuttin’ But the Tooth!
