Vaguely Amusing

lady-aberlin

Here’s an overlong writeup of the 20071005 Jonathan Coulton with Paul and Storm concert at Johnny D’s in Somerville, Massachusetts.

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With the JoCoFo(rums) a no-go, I’m posting this here, which is appropriate because it’s fairly lengthy. Fairly.

This is my proposed synopsis of the JoCo Forums’ Jonathan Coulton Broadway Production. It’s way too long and unwieldy, but hey, I’m more of an idea guy (read: lazy guy) — I’ll leave the arguments about what to trim to everyone else.

My really long writeup follows this jump-cut.

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Like any Mavericks fan, I was tremendously relieved after the Mavs won on Wednesday to even the series with Golden State. In fact, I was probably more relieved than anyone else, because I’ve been sitting on this for a little while.

I’m not very superstitious in general, but I’m a little sports superstitious, and I didn’t want to put up a post about the Mavericks’ march to playoff victory before they’d actually, y’know, gotten a playoff victory.

Anyway, I’m all-encompassingly a homer, but I think the Mavs are the best team in the NBA. (If I hailed from Phoenix or San Antonio, I’d be saying the same thing about different colored laundry right now.) They have solid defense, good penetration, reliable outside shooting, and a lot of depth. All they’ve lacked… is a fight song.

This is to the tune of Ernest Longstaffe’s “When the Sergeant-Major’s on Parade.” To the tune of the chorus, actually, as the verse is kinda blah.

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As ever, apologies to anyone who’s got good enough pitch recognition to wince at my terrible vocals.

Transcript and lyrics follow.

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(”Friday?” Well, I guess I was working on it on Friday, or something. Also, I think this is the fifth Fiasco, but I’ve forgotten to keep count.)

I’m thinking about picking up a new instrument (if only so that I can accompany myself without that same plodding oom-pah piano) Just how easily influenced I am can be seen in the list of new instruments I’m considering:

• harp, because of the Marx Brothers
• zither, because of The Third Man
• banjolele, because of Wodehouse
• guitar, because I actually own one

Now here comes The Doifter, set on spoiling my calculations by introducing a new element into the mix. A tiny, four-stringed element of pure joy.

Here is my cover of her song, “The Rubbish of Strangers.” My rendition contains no ukelele, unfortunately (although the allergic should note that it was manufactured in a facility that also processes ukeleles), and as you can guess, my singing is not at all as good as hers. Accompaniment is also by me, on plodding oom-pah piano. Finally, I’ve added new lyrics and music of my own composition to the end.

If you still want to listen in spite of all that, here it is.

Lyrics are after the jump.

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Well, I hope you enjoyed NaNoBryAlmoFoMo (National No Bry for Almost Four Months), because it’s ending now. Thanks to all of you who wrote in to ask after my welfare or whereabouts. Actually, no one did. But that’s all right.  I don’t mind. Really.

Anyway, my voice is just about recuperated after eight weeks of weeping softly into my pillow while whimpering, “No one cares!”, and so I’m about ready to try a few songs again.

There. If three months of blog silence didn’t drive away all the readers, threats of singing surely will.

(Actually, since I don’t think my e-mail address is listed anywhere on this blog, it’d be kinda difficult for my hypothetical friends to send me an e-mail.) 

Yes and no, as in it’s not ready for publication yet. I’ll have plenty of time this weekend, though (Saints bye week, Cowboys Monday night game), and it’s non-musical, so expect it up before the end of Saturday.

At which point I may edit this post to make it look as though I had it up today.

or, Channelling my inner Chris “If Hitler had a speech defect that caused him to pronounce soft G sounds as Bs, he’d call himself a” Berman.
My most recent disappointment has been this:

I knew a guy whom I’ll refer to as Ramesh. Now, for the longest time, I thought his name was Ramesh Thimmashetty, and so in my mind I’d given him a nickname that was, although completely incongruous with his personality or appearance, absolutely perfect: Ramesh “The Machete” Thimmashetty.

And one of my biggest regrets was that I never had the guts to call him “The Machete.” Every time I called him Ramesh, I felt a little guilty for not unleashing the greatest nickname in the history of civilized man.

Then the other day I found out his name was really Ramesh Patel.

Now I’m a little relieved that I never broke out the nickname, but I can’t help but feel a little sad.

Poor Ramesh. Through no fault of his own, he is now 30% less cool.

PS: His real names are not Ramesh or Patel. However, I did think his surname was Thimmashetty.

PPS: Things that Bry judges to be cool do not, in fact, tend to be cool.

I’m not sure if this is another series / category yet — I’ll edit that later if I decide to continue.

I don’t know if this happens to anyone else, but whenever I write an e-mail, I have trouble coming up with a suitable subject line. A lot of the time, all I have to say is “Hello!” or something, but I’m always nervous that it’ll get caught by a spam filter or virus checker or something. I mean, if I got an e-mail from an unfamiliar address with the subject “Hello,” I’m not sure I’d open it. More like call in the bomb squad.

To avoid this, I put more and more details into the subject of my messages. An e-mail that would’ve been titled “Hello” gets titled something like “Hello from Bry, who was in your 10th grade English class and this is not a spam so please read it even though it’s not that important and I guess you might as well delete it anyway.” (And then the message body reads, “See subject line. –Bry”)

A certain person, whose birthday is incidentally today, used to send me e-mails with the subject line blank, which was sweet of her, not only because of the e-mails, dear as they were to me, but also because it let me know that I could send her e-mails without agonizing over the subject line. However, Thunderbird, my e-mail client of choice, spoilt this by reminding me every time that I hadn’t included a subject line, did I want to?

Ah well. It’s irrational issues like this that prevent my online-mail-order-ED-drug business from taking off.

Ebooks!

or, A post in which I contemplate rooting for the Saints in their second season after Katrina while conscientiously avoiding calling myself a “fair-weather fan”

Back to the old grind.

I am finding it difficult to root for any team with that player on it, and I say this after he had three touchdown catches last game (granted, against the unimpressive Texans). The team I really want to support is New Orleans.

For one thing, New Orleans is basically a Cowboy satellite state right now. Head coach Sean Payton, as sports commentators keep mentioning, ran the Dallas offense the last three years.

(Less frequently mentioned: Payton is an Eastern Illinois University alumnus, as is Cowboys backup QB / fan favorite Tony Romo, whom Payton coached the last few years. Of the 32 NFL head coaches, three are EIU alumni: Payton, Mike Shanahan of the Broncos, and Brad Childress of the Vikings. Payton, Romo, and Shanahan were starting QBs for the Division I-AA Panthers.)

Rob Petitti, who started 16 games at RT for Dallas last year, plays for the Saints. Two of their three starting linebackers (Shanle and Fujita) were brought over from Dallas.

The Cowboys have so much LB depth that even running a 3-4 defense, i.e. starting 4 linebackers, they

• let the Saints take Shanle and Fujita, who both had started last year,
• cut Rocky Boiman, whom they had given an $1 million signing bonus, and
• regularly leave 2006 1st round pick Bobby Carpenter off the game-day active roster.

Also, I cannot forget ex-Cowboy and current Saints starting SS Omar Stoutmire, much as I would like to.

What else? I can totally pull for Drew Brees and Deuce McAllister, both of whom are playing really well despite recent potentially career-ending injuries. Reggie Bush and Joe Horn have got to be a lot of fun to watch, and as regards fineable touchdown rituals, cell phones trump Sharpies any day.

Oh, and they can actually finish the job against the Eagles. *muttermuttermutter*

The problem? The Saints are 5-1 right now, and nothing screams “bandwagon” more than deciding to switch loyalties to a team that’s 5-1. (It’d be breaking a Man Law.) I mean, Cowboys fans are notorious for bandwagonism as it is. And I wasn’t exactly out there every game rooting for the post-Katrina Saints, when every NFL fan was required to support them. I can make excuses — I’d be cheering for players I like (the Scotts, particularly), and I can hardly wait for Payton to break out Blue Steel — but 5-1 still nags at my sense of decency.

I do want to make it clear that if I transfer my loyalties to the Saints, that’s it for me as long as the player has a star on his helmet. I don’t mean I wouldn’t be happy if he won a Super Bowl with the Cowboys, but the Saints would be “my” team. Whichever I decide on, I’ll support, even at the detriment of the other.

Which means, of course, that you should be circling 10 December on the calendars, folks, because that’s when this crucible culminates. We’ll see what I’m saying then:

“…I love to watch them lose to the Cowboys…”

or

“Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints!”

In the meantime, the Saints have got a bye this Sunday, which gives me another week to come to some kind of decision. Of course, if it weren’t for that bandwagon thing, my choice would be easy. Still, New Orleans has a tough schedule coming up, so maybe I should be hoping they lose some games so that I can cheer for them with an easy conscience.

(PS: The first football game I ever attended was a preseason game between the Cowboys and the Saints.)