To slake my curiosity, I’ll ask the forum: What do you like to see in the forum? What kinds of posts would make a new forum member stand out to you in a good way? What have you seen before in the forums that is interesting to you? What would be a post that’s interesting to you that you haven’t seen the likes of before?

Finally, my answer:

What kind of posts do I like to see? Well, it’s a bit of an ambiguous question (and it’s meant to be, because I didn’t want to fence anyone in). The way I see it, there are the kinds of posts that become my favorites (“exceptional posts”), and there are the kinds of posts that I like to see on a regular basis (“good posts”).

To me, posts are exceptional when they:

• Give a new perspective on something, particularly something familiar to me. I don’t claim to understand all the things that our various resident music theorists post, for instance, but I love their JoCo analyses because they hear things I don’t and they can express them to me. (Then again, I also frittered away most of the 1990s re-listening to the Beatles while reading AWP.) Or, for another example, Jinx’s comments on “Soterios Johnson”, relating it to the gay dance scene — I don’t believe any more than Jinx does that the fictional SoJo is gay, but the link between that and the song’s “living two lives” theme is something I’d never have come up with on my own (my fault I’m so heteronormative).

• Similarly, find a connection, especially between apparently unrelated things. I can’t think of a good example off the top of my head, but basically if you can show me how a raven is like a writing desk*, I’ll be impressed. Exceptional posts might draw a thread to show some kind of pattern across JoCo’s songs, or they might relate JoCo’s songs to some other musical (or other) trend.
• Contain or link to an exceptional creation. Of course, what’s exceptional to me is a matter of my judgment, not yours. But I have a fairly keen memory for things that people wrote or created that I really like, whether it’s Schnappi’s “Christmas Is Interesting” video, or Walt “gmrtech” Ribeiro’s orchestrations of Code Monkey and Ikea, or MaW and Borba’s “Repent Your Brains,” or (cheating a little, since it just happened) three08′s “I Crush Everything” sonnet, or any number of other fan creations that it’s been my privilege to witness during my time on the forums.
• Express a desire to lead or conduct a collaborative project. This is one of my big things, you’ve probably noticed — one of my favorite things about the forums are that they allow (and facilitate) things like JoCopedia and Travels of Code Monkey / Ponkey, full credit to Lex, Colleen, and BenS (with a tip of the hat to the other participants). Actually, doesn’t even have to be a “real project” — I had a lot of fun watching the organization for the JoCoLoCo meetup (Lex, take another bow). Anyone could do these things, yes (well, maybe not “set up MediaWiki on one’s own server and eventually help migrate it to the official site”), but the fact that someone is taking charge is really impressive to me — and this goes, too, for projects that haven’t really gotten off the ground, like redrawn-Flickr and distributed-video musical.
• Are exceptionally well-done good posts (v.i.).

Obviously, not every post can be brilliant — I don’t expect them to be, either. There are posts I like to see that aren’t particularly brilliant, just good. And posts are good when they:

• Tell me something about their authors. I mean “something” like interests, personality, etc. Preferably something good, or at least neutral, of course — I wouldn’t think of a post as good if what it told me was that its author was an illiterate, antagonistic bigot (and that is not drawn from any incident that has occurred in this forum, Lord be praised). Like Spiff, I’ve been enjoying the Introduce Yourself posts, but it doesn’t have to be an outright introduction.

• As a corollary to the above, express, and where possible explain, enthusiasm for a subject — Spiff mentions the threads for JoCo gigs, which are great. I’ve also enjoyed the posts in the Favorite Songs thread — even just hearing that someone really enjoys a song I don’t listen to much makes me more interested in listening to it again. Doesn’t have to be JoCo-related; those just happen to be some of my favorite examples.
• Are clever, witty, intelligent, funny, informative, etc.
• Go beyond mere fact-dump. I have a fervid appreciation for lists of facts, and I post them myself on a regular basis, but a lot of times, fact-dump is an end to discussion. Convenient example, no criticism meant of anyone who contributed: In the last few posts of this thread, there was some discussion of forum members’ account numbers, etc. It’s not a bad topic (although it isn’t quite on topic for this thread), but it runs the risk of devolving into, “I’m number this! I’m number that!” I could see a more interesting discussion start up, using the same data, on things like, how fast has the forum grown? (It took about 4.5 months to get from 101 to 201 members; it took about 1.5 months to get from 601 to 701 members.) What spikes are there? How do we relate these statistics to something meaningful?
• Similarly, encourage discussion. That includes asking questions or starting threads where discussion takes place; it also includes replying when others have discussion topics, particularly replies that are open-ended enough to invite further responses.
• Post something creative that’s JoCo-related. It doesn’t have to be brilliant — I will appreciate it even if it’s just a straightforward cover of a song with nothing original about it.
• Are gracious. I’m not very good at this one, but — y’know, when you’re right, don’t rub it in; when you’re wrong, acknowledge it with thanks. (Not saying you have to — just saying I like when you do.)
• Are, if anything, underconfident. I like people who think about what they say — not that confident people can’t be thoughtful, but people who aren’t confident ought to, and often do, put more thought into their posts.
• Express some familiarity with what’s going on in the thread. If you can’t read the whole thread, at least figure out what the thread’s about and who said what.
• Are self-policing. That’s a selfish wish — I don’t like having to get on people’s cases, and I’d really rather the forum take care of itself. If you see something someone does that doesn’t seem to fit with the forum code of conduct, speak up! (Graciously, of course — but speak up!)

So what does it take for me to notice you? Either a small number of exceptional posts or a consistent level of good posts will do. Or, just read the threads, read the threads and I will like you.

One other thing: I really enjoyed, and largely agreed with, Ben’s comment about “largely informative posts that stay on topic,” particularly the part about the fluidity of discussions. One thing I’ve just recognized is that I regard posts within a thread more or less the same way I regard threads within the forum: the stated purpose of the forum is JoCo discussion, so threads on that subject are always encouraged, but off-topic threads are generally welcome as well. In the same way, whatever the stated purpose of a thread is, posts on that subject are always fine, but off-topic posts are generally okay too. (It’s a fractal pattern!) I’m not real picky about on-topicness, as long as off-topic posts aren’t drowning out people who want to stay on topic.

I know, tl;dr.

* (they both tip over when you saw their legs off**)
** (if you quote this answer I’d appreciate credit)

SPEAKTHOUTOMEWHENBITTERGALLTHYBREAST
DOTHOVERSWELLORWHENTHYSTARSARESWAYD
BYMARTIALCHOLERIATTHYBEHEST
MYSELFDESPATCHTOLOOSETHINEAMBUSCADE
SOTHOUMAYSTSTANDTHEBUFFETTAKEASHARE
INPAINFULPITYANDWITHMARTYRSHANDS
OUTSTRETCHDTHYGUILELESSINNOCENCEDECLARE
STILLGRIEVDBYTROUBLESNOONEUNDERSTANDS
YETWHENISEETHEWAYSELFSORROWDRIPS
FROMEYESOCCLUDEDBYCONCEITANDDRINK
ORLETTHEEWRENCHCONTRITIONFROMMYLIPS
ORWITNESSBEARTOSOLITUDEITHINK
MYSELFOERSEIZEDINTHINEORBITWHY
WHOTHENISTRULYMADLOVETHOUORI

Got it? Let’s carry on.
I’ve had the genesis of this in my mind for several, well, months. By “genesis”, though, I mean, “What if I were to do one of Shruti’s favorite songs in Shakespearean sonnet?” rather than having any actual ideas. Then I discovered that (spoiler, if you haven’t done the work already) there are 14 letters in “Someone Is Crazy,” which led to the idea of an acrostic, which then quickly became the idea of a diagonal acrostic once I saw that there was a z in it.

There’s no good orderly manner to go about this, since it wasn’t written in a good orderly manner, so I’ll go line by line with my thoughts.

Lines 1-3:

Speak thou to me when bitter gall thy breast
Doth overswell, or when thy stars are sway’d
By Martial choler.

Speak thou to me (line 1): Was, in original drafts, “Send thou for me”. I’d go with “send” if this were my own work, but “speak” is a better paraphrase.

bitter (line 1): I made a conscious effort throughout to refrain from using words found in the original. I can’t fault people for doing it the other way, and sometimes it turns out well — see John Maloney’s “Poem based in ‘The Big Boom’” for an effective example. But there’s something lazy or unclever about it (recall my motto, “Better clever than good”), whether in filks or parodies or whatever, to copy the original’s words. (If I wanted to read the original, I’d read the original!)

“Bitter” was one of my few concessions — here I’m paraphrasing the “Is Bitter there?” opening, except replacing the “different persona” conceit (which I did consider keeping, in the style of the “seven ages of man”) with the “humours”. The reason I had to insert “bitter” was, of course, that although gall or bile is bitter, neither yellow nor black bile was actually associated with bitterness!

Martial (line 3): And I start mixing my metaphors really early here. Bad form, Bry. Now we go to astrological influences — and then, for some reason, I combine astrology and humour (the “choler”). The intent is to paraphrase “Good and Mad”, the other persona the narrator’s okay with talking to. “Martial” sure looks like a concession to the requirements of the acrostic, but in fact it wasn’t — I had it in mind from the first, but it just happened to work out that way. There will be plenty of examples of acrostic-forcing, just wait.

Lines 3-6:

I at thy behest
Myself despatch to loose thine ambuscade
So thou may’st bear the buffet, take a share
In painful pity,

at thy behest (line 3): Early drafts had “thy heart” ending line 1, then “I, to play my part” here. I waver (I don’t think either is all that good), but I think I prefer the new version — it keeps a little more emphasis on the “thou” of the poem, which is my goal for the octave. I was also debating over how much punctuation to use here — I ended up using more commas in this sentence than I’d intended, but I left out the commas around “at thy behest”.

Myself despatch (line 4): And not “despatch myself”, for the fourth letter of “despatch” isn’t an “e”. I was pleased as punch to run across “despatch” — both because it captured exactly the meaning I was looking for (where things like “send” or “order” weren’t quite the same) and because I could spell it this way instead of “dispatch.”

This is, of course, jumping to the second verse and chorus (“You set the trap, you lie in wait till someone trips the wire…”) I have the narrator springing the trap, rather than the “someone”, but it ends up tying in all right, I think, the idea being that the narrator knows “thou” wants someone to trip the wire and so does it himself.

bear the buffet, take a share (line 5): This went through so many variations – “take the buffet and thy share” being a rather zeugmatic version that stuck for a while. “Take the blow and so partake” was ruled out for echoing reasons, but “bear the blow and so partake” finally lost out when I decided it’d be easier to rhyme “share”. And although I use “buffet” in its “a blow” definition, pronounced “BUFF-it,” the idea of “bearing the buffet”, like all-you-can-eat, is probably a little distracting to the modern eye.

Also, I tossed around “take thy share,” instead, but it was too much – thy breast, thy stars, thy behest, thine ambuscade, and now thy share? I wish I were a better poet.

painful (line 6): Another reuse of word, I guess, although the original only mentions “beg for pain”. “Painful pity” I use to mean “pity obtained through pain,” which is a Shakespearean touch, I feel, though I can’t cite sources offhand. (I can’t even recall what literary term it is, which I really ought to know.)

Lines 6-8:

and with martyr’s hands
Outstretch’d, thy guileless innocence declare,
Still griev’d by troubles no-one understands.

with martyr’s hands / Outstretch’d (line 6-7): I have to admit I like how this worked out — first off, that “outstretched” has the “e” in the proper position, but also that I managed to elaborate on the “throw your hands up in the air” a little bit. (Now not only is it a gesture to protest one’s ignorance, it’s also a display of innocence — linking in with all the “begging for pain” stuff).

thy guileless innocence (line 7): Oh, look, another “thy.” Well, I thought about avoiding it — “Outstretched, surprise and innocence declare,” or something to convey the “And you act surprised / How did that get there?”, but I decided one more wouldn’t kill me. Yes, I chose “guileless” to suggest “guiltless,” but that makes it sound as though I put a lot more thought into it than I did.

declare (line 7): One reason it was easy to avoid reusing words from the original is that the original is barely rhymed. There is that internal rhyme, “hands up in the air and swear you didn’t know”, which is nice, but it meant I ruled out “swear” as a rhyme word here. (It doesn’t scan now, but I could’ve made it scan.)

Still griev’d by troubles no-one understands (line 8): I’m not so pleased with this line. It feels very much to me like a “gotta find a rhyme” line, which is exactly what it is. “still griev’d” is again forced by the acrostic — I was searching for ways to sneak in “injured” or anything, but all things considered it’ll do.

The ending of the line feels too colloquial, but maybe that’s just because I was trying to highfalutin the rest. It had to be “understands” with an “s” to rhyme with “hands” plural, so I couldn’t say “none can understand.” I would’ve preferred “no man” to “no-one,” but the assonance with “man” / “understands” is ugly. Also in consideration: “Heaven understands,” but I just had to go, in the end, with the option that best preserved my meaning. I’d have liked some other filler word than “troubles” — there’s gotta be a more evocative option — but I just wanted to turn this in before deadline.

Lines 9-12:

Yet when I see the way self-sorrow drips
From eyes occluded by conceit and drink,
Or let thee wrench contrition from my lips,
Or witness stand to solitude,

Yet (line 9): Signaling, clumsily, the volta, or turn. Lines 9-11 are my favorite three lines from the entire thing. Aside from the “Yet”, they turned out exactly the way I wanted them to. The turn here is that — y’know, the song is just, “you’re awful, you’re awful, you’re awful, the end,” but the narrator’s been putting up with this for a long time. If it’s a break-up or renunciation, why hasn’t it happened before? And why is the narrator still trying to talk to Bitter? There’s gotta be something that keeps him coming back, probably guilt-trips and such.

(Actually, the subject could be a mother or something — not to psychoanalyze, of course. It strikes me that the subject reminds me a lot of Lucille Bluth from “Arrested Development.”)

For sonnet purposes, the turn is that the narrator is still not over “thee”, still hopelessly in some kind of self-destructive love. And so the shift I’m intending to get is from “these are the things you do” to “these are the things I let you do”.

drips (line 9): A happy discovery. I knew I wanted “lips” in line 11 — I’d have settled for “tongue” if there’d been a better alternative that rhymed with that, but “lips” was my first choice. This let me sneak in a reference to “stop the waterworks”, and the “eyes” fit perfectly afterwards. (I used “self-sorrow” as a justification for the waterworks, which was never spelled out in the song — it would’ve been “self-pity” if I hadn’t already had “painful pity.”)

occluded (line 10): Wonderfully satisfying my “c” requirement, but also, as it turns out, exactly the word I was looking for but didn’t have in mind. (I wanted to say “acclim’d,” which isn’t actually a word — “acclimated” is what I was looking for, but that doesn’t have any sort of positive ring to it.) If “occluded” wasn’t a word, I’d have probably settled for, and been okay with, “accustomed,” but it let me shoehorn in the reference to “spend a couple evenings sober” (“drink”), and then “conceit” which could refer to anything. It made me happy.

wrench (line 11): But this made me happier. My notes (without letter-counting) read, “And let thee drag contrition from my lips”, and changing “and” to “or” meant “drag” fit, but a little more searching and I happened upon “wrench,” which is — well, I like it better, but “drag” is an excellent alternative. Maybe “drag” fits better with the sonnet — is “wrench” too violent for a sestet that’s supposed to be about “things I let you do?” But — y’know, “wrench” is what I wanted.

“Wrench contrition from my lips” finishes the statement I never got around to finishing from the first verse — “She can make me say I’m sorry.” I couldn’t fit it where it’d have made sense, earlier on, but I really, really wanted the reference somewhere, and I’m glad I got it in.

witness stand to solitude (line 12): Argh, now I’m less happy. Maybe this should’ve been “witness bear to solitude” and line 5 “stand the buffet…” Okay, yeah, I’m gonna edit my forum comment to say just that. It’s confusing which word is the actual verb, of course. I meant “stand witness to solitude”. And “solitude” alludes to the the “all alone” / “why does everybody hate me?” lines (from different verses / choruses). I’m hinting at “thou” being all alone except for the narrator standing there — why’s he there exactly?

I desperately wanted to fit in the “put those claws away” line somehow, but I couldn’t figure out a variation on “sheathe / unsheathe” and “talons” that would put the “a” in the right place.

Lines 12-14:

I think
Myself o’erseizèd in thine orbit; why,
Who then is truly mad, love, thou or I?

o’erseizèd (line 13): The thing about writing in a Shakespearean style is that he had full license to invent words, so so do I! (So goes the logic, at least.) This was, perforce, the most awkward line, since I had to work the “z” in somewhere. I tried “amazed,” “(be)dazed,” “haze”, “(be)dazzled”, “frozen” (which nearly made the cut), and possibly others, but all of them ran into difficulties with lining the words up properly. The three letters between “myself” and “frozen,” etc., were really hard to fill — I nearly went with “Myself all frozen in thy orbit”, which makes little sense (not that this makes much more). I finally resorted — well, first, after trying to figure out how to find words with “z”s in them, I realized that this was the kind of problem a Scrabble player would have to solve, which led me to find this list of words with “z”s. (If I were reading someone else’s blog and they admitted to doing this, I’d be a little impressed with their ingenuity but mostly sad that I gave them so much credit and now it’s not magic any more.) But I finally resorted to brainstorming three-letter prefixes — “misseized” was up there, and very close to taking the prize. “Disseized” sounds good, and is even a real word, but unfortunately it’s a real word with the wrong meaning (“to kick out, to displace”). Finally I realized that if I was playing at Shakespeare, I could play at Shakespeare and abbreviate “over-”, which I notably didn’t do in “overswell,” line 2.

Note that I both shorten this word — by compressing “over” into one syllable — and lengthen it — by pronouncing the “ed” as a separate syllable. This amuses me, but it’s bad style. I contemplated “myself o’erseiz’d into thy orbit,” with “into” instead of “in”.

orbit (line 13): I abandoned the astrological metaphor ten lines ago, but this ended up being the best I could do for the brilliant, wonderful, beautiful lines, “You think the world revolves around you but it doesn’t, so you sit and spin.” But it does let me do something with the idea of the narrator being in “thy” thrall.

why, (line 13): COP-OUT ALERT! I didn’t have the energy to deliver an actual rhyme, but I knew where line 14 was going, so I just shoveled some dirt over it and called it done.

mad, love, thou or I? (line 14): “Baby, someone is crazy, and I think it’s me.” I considered “moonstruck, thou or I”, to carry this “orbit” idea forward while adding the “lunacy coming from the moon” thing. I thought “love” was a bigger punch, so I swung with it.

I think that’s it for now. My favorite sonneteer is Wyatt, and his bag was to translate Petrarch’s sonnets from the Italian but throw in a note of bitter, hopeless, desperate infatuation. I didn’t manage to hit that note the way I’d kinda hoped to, but now there’s some hint of infatuation in the translation that wasn’t there before.

lady-aberlin

I went to bed too late Thursday night and woke up too early Friday morning, so I was feeling substantially tetchy when I got to Johnny D’s at 9:30 or so (didn’t help that the T outbound on the Red Line wasn’t running, and the cabbie I ended up hiring couldn’t read street signs). Johnny D’s isn’t terrifically stocked with sittable places, but there’s lots of standing room, most of which was occupied (unfortunately for the waitstaff, who had to navigate through the crowd).

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, while I am definitely nerdy, I feel out of my element in a congregation of nerds — discussions of science fiction and Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons and Renaissance Faires give me such a headache. That said, the crowd really got into the show — or at least the ones who were there for the show did. The BoSox game was on, and some non-trivial fraction of the patrons were there for the game, or I should say for alcohol while the game occurred.

Lots of audience participation, although the item-throwing was entirely one-sided — no monkeys or panties were thrown, but Paul and Storm (mostly Storm) threw snack cakes out into the crowd, which served partly to reward particularly apt comments from audience members and mostly to encourage some people who should’ve probably been discouraged from talking. (Remember: tetchy.) Which isn’t to say there weren’t funny comments — I’ll mention a few of them in the writeup as I reach them, chronologically. I remember a lot of other comments, but I have the self-restraint to keep from subjecting y’all to them, which is more than can be said for the original commenters.

There were some minor celebrities in attendance — the family of the late Dr. Robert C. Baker, subject of Paul and Storm’s song “Nugget Man,” appeared and assured P&S that Dr. Baker had a sense of humor. Also, a bunch of developers from Harmonix, responsible for the “Guitar Hero” franchise, who denied the rumors that JoCo would make an appearance in the next game. Also, David, who drove to Northampton and back to retrieve the case of CDs Paul had left there.

Back to chronological order. Paul and Storm’s set started around 10 pm. The set list wasn’t much different from the one from the other JC w/P&S show I’ve attended, the Birchmere on August 31. I like them a lot, they’re great musicians, they’re good at writing funny songs, they do well with stage banter and things like that, I’ve been a fan since they were half of Da Vinci’s Notebook, but I can’t get all that invested in them. At the Birchmere, their songs had the benefit of novelty to me; this time, they were still kinda funny. I get really beaten down by pirate humor in general, and tonight was no exception. Fortunately, hardly anyone tried to keep the “arr”s going after Paul and Storm’s sea shanty — I was listening to recordings of that California show with people saying “guit-arrr” and “st-arrr-t” and I was wincing and wincing and cringing and wincing.

Along with aforementioned sea shanty, another song they did that isn’t funny to me is “Your Love Is (Love Song with Metaphor)” — Billy Collins did it better and less forcedly, but I digress.

Anyway, Paul and Storm performed their new song, “Nun Fight,” written just earlier this week, and did it really well (go listen to their studio recording at the link above). Also, it’s Storm’s birthday this weekend, so the occasion was marked with stuff Paul found at a CVS 90 minutes before the show.

Really what I want to talk about is Coulton’s set, so let’s fast-forward to after the break. Actually, what I really want to talk about is right as the break started, I leaned against a divider and was immediately shooed away by a guy seated behind the divider, motioning that I was blocking his view of the empty stage. Thanks, guy. Sorry to bother you. I realize I erred in thinking that you were interested in watching the groups perform, when in fact you were fixated on beholding the backdrop at the back of the stage and you couldn’t bear it when I stood between you and it for five seconds during that oh-so-brief period when no one was occupying the stage. God, what a wrench it must have been to find that when you paid the $15 cover charge, for the three hours you were there, you’d get a bunch of musicians obstructing your cherished backdrop from your sight for all but twenty minutes.

(Tetchy.)

As usual, Coulton popped on stage for three-part harmonies in “Nugget Man” during Paul and Storm’s set. After the break, though, Paul and Storm took the stage before Coulton’s introduction; I don’t remember exactly how it went, but they said something like “the man who will soft-rock your socks off, Jonathan Coulton!” and up he went.

After an intro like that, they pretty much had to start with “Soft Rocked by Me“, after which P&S left the stage for a few songs. Next was “Ikea“, then ”Shop Vac“. I love “Shop Vac,” and I wish JoCo would come up with a solo for it that could be performed live, or even learn one of the solos submitted for the contest, but I’m happy just to hear it. A few of us tried to start the handclaps in the chorus, which always petered out at the end of the chorus in what P&S earlier (in the banter preceding “A Better Version of You“) called a “white-person handclap massacre”. One brave soul went to the upper registers for the backing vocals in the chorus (“for heaven’s sake it’s really loud with the shop vac on”) — depends whether you grade effort and originality or musical ability, I guess.

It was definitely a Coulton crowd, and his next song, “Skullcrusher Mountain“, was the first of several that basically the entire audience knew. At the final chorus, JoCo stepped away from the mike and had the audience sing it ourselves. (I’m going to assert that that’s grammatically correct and leave it at that.) Next came “I Crush Everything,” which JoCo’s gotten better at introducing (this time it was something like, “This is a sad song about a giant squid that’s in love with ships,” except punchier).

Paul and Storm hopped back on stage for ”Baby Got Back“, and then JoCo mentioned the trip they’d taken to the offices of Harmonix, at which aforesaid Harmonix developers broke into a cheer, and he talked about his own software-writing job and how this next song is about what it feels like to be a coder. He set off into the opening chords of “Code Monkey,” stopped, and said that every time he did that, he always wanted to do something else. He started a couple of bars of chords, and before I’d gotten a chance to recognize it, all three (JoCo, P, and S) sang, right on cue, “Good! Day! Sun! Shine!” and launched into a flawless rendition of the Beatles’ hit. They went about to the third chorus or so before Coulton stopped, saying that it was too high for him and he “should know better than to cover a Paul McCartney song” (at which I should mention that one of my favorite Things a Week is his cover of a Paul McCartney song, although he does take it in a lower key than the Beatles do). Some more banter: JoCo clarified that that was not, in fact, “Code Monkey,” and Storm chimed in to add that it was, however, exactly what it feels like to be a coder. Then they did ”Code Monkey“, which was great.

Jonathan asked for a little more help for the next one, asking if there was a ukulelist in the audience, preferably a tall one wearing a shirt that color-coordinated (Jonathan was in a bright yellow T-shirt with an anatomical diagram of a heart on it, which had drawn some comments from the audience during his appearance in the Paul and Storm set, none of which deserve to be repeated). Up came Ian Schwartz to do a song that JoCo said he hadn’t figured out how to do on acoustic guitar. (Audience member: “Bacteria!” Coulton: “No, not ‘Bacteria’, but I would like to figure out a way to do that one.” ZenDrum, ‘tsall I’m saying. You’re welcome.) It was, in fact, “Big Bad World One,” a song I love — it was interesting texturally, with a lead singer, two backing vocalists, and a ukulele accompanying. Ian left the stage and JoCo and P&S launched into “Creepy Doll“, a song for which the ukulele’s sound would seem a more natural fit. I like the TaW “Creepy Doll” recording, but I actually like the live version (with Paul and Storm with occasional hand percussion – dig the tambourine) a lot more. Paul and Storm’s last song (of the pre-encores — oops, spoiler) was “I Feel Fantastic, ” and you can tell it’s a Coulton crowd when he intro’d “Popular Science” magazine and everyone cheered and one guy held up a copy of the “Our Bodies, Ourselves…” CD in a jewel case with the cover on the front (JoCo: “He’s got a copy of the cover…of the CD… that never existed.”).

Then Coulton strapped on the Zen Drum for “Mister Fancy Pants,” and a woman (who’d snagged one of the few seats in front of the stage) called out, “Don’t wear that in Logan Airport!” (where, just a few weeks ago, an MIT student was arrested for wearing a shirt with a circuit board). You can tell he’s been practicing — he’s got loops of various lines, and he ended his ZenDrum solo by piecing them together to get, “Chances are you’re / best in / everybody’s / pants!” It was great, but seriously: “Bacteria.” Make it happen.

Then ”When You Go,“ done solo with guitar (and not a capella), then “The Future Soon” (I like it better as the first song of the set, but it really doesn’t matter that much to me), then “Better,” which I would’ve liked more if he’d figured out a way to keep that little “mi-re-do-ti-do-la-ti-do” hook. It was around 12:30 am at that point, and JoCo said he’d do just a couple more songs, the audience complained, and he said, “Oh, come on, we all just want to go to bed.” The crowd riffed on that line for way too long, taking it suggestively — at which point, for as many times as those people have probably seen Rocky Horror, it’s surprising they can’t come up with new or even good material. JoCo finally shut them up with, “All right, we should probably stop talking about the audience having sex with me.” He moved on to a song about math: “Mandelbrot Set,” and when he hit the “teaching math at Yale“ line, he ad-libbed, “Sorry, Harvard.” In the middle of the song, Manny Ramirez hit a walk-off three-run homer to win it for the Red Sox. Sportswatching clientele let off a cheer, which JoCo acknowledged and thanked them for.

The woman with the “Logan Airport” line asked Jonathan to play a song about the Sox – if not the Red Sox, at least the Black Sox. He obliged, with “Kenesaw Mountain Landis“, and then messed up in the middle (“Wow,” he said, and moved on). He introed his last song with something about audience participation and found that the entire crowd knew he was talking about “Re Your Brains.” He didn’t even bother explaining the singalong part: “Since you guys know it already, just go ahead and do it,” he said, and we all yelled, “All we want to do is eat your brains!”

At the end of the song, he walked offstage, and the crowd began to chant, “(Jon-a-than!) Coul-ton! (Jon-a-than!) Coul-ton!” which finally deteriorated into just, “Coul-ton! Coul-ton! Coul-ton!” until he, and Paul and Storm, reentered. They did “First of May,” then closed out with “Sweet Caroline” — which, as the BoSox’s unofficial anthem, got a satisfyingly ardent response; everyone joined in on the “ba-ba-ba”s and “So good! So good! So good!”s in the chorus. The only way it could’ve worked out better — have Manny’s homer come right before that.

It was 1 o’clock by then. Didn’t know if they were signing, and I didn’t have anything with me they could sign, and I was almost out of cash, and the T was closed, so I took a cab and went home, feeling so much less tetchy that I hardly noticed that the taxi hit every! single! red! light! on the way back to Cambridge.

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.

The time: A future much like the present, except for all the differences. The place: A small town in the mountains, where the streets are wide and still (Flickr). BRADLEY wakes up and goes to his job as a computer programmer (Code Monkey). He flirts hopelessly with BETTY, the vivacious receptionist, and offers to meet her for drinks the next night (Drinking with You), but she turns him down, because she has already agreed to have dinner with another of her gentleman callers. Heartbroken, Bradley reminisces about all the other times life has let him down (Big Bad World One) and makes an appointment to see DR. MARTIN. He returns from the appointment armed with a thick stack of prescriptions and a whole new outlook on life.

Bradley returns to work the next day full of vim and medication (I Feel Fantastic). He brushes off a surprised Betty, who then soliloquizes about her own lost love, whom she vaguely remembers from their days in the incubation ward (Womb with a View). Bradley and Betty run into each other again at dinner, having both been stood up by their respective dates, and he reveals to her that he’d submitted his resignation that day to his manager ROB, being, as he puts it, tired of stressing out over deadlines. She reads into his behavior an assertiveness and gumption that she has never seen in him before. Before she knows it, she is excitedly pledging to support him in finding something to do with his life that is fulfilling in creative way. They leave, overjoyed. Well, she’s overjoyed. He’s feeling kinda mellow.

Flash forward a few lengths of time in their relationship. Betty is now Mrs. Brad, but she’s not quite as overjoyed as she once was. Bradley, for his part, is still feeling kinda mellow. He’s still on his regimen of pills, and he’s found creative fulfillment by imagining elaborate scenarios in which they are bailed out of their financial woes by a wealthy Lady Bountiful (Millionaire Girlfriend). She is struggling to provide for them both on her receptionist’s salary (I’d suggest Bills, Bills, Bills, if it weren’t a cover). He promises to stay with her, at least until they’re rich enough for the divorce settlement to be worth something (Till the Money Comes). She finds her solace the same place, oddly enough, that he found his: Dr. Martin — but in an entirely different manner. Slowly, some of the changes in Betty’s personality begin to penetrate Bradley’s chemical haze (Betty and Me). Soon Dr. Martin is encouraging her to experiment with somewhat more permanent physical alterations, with which Bradley is none too pleased — in a mellow way, of course (Better).

Finally, Betty finds her miserable marriage too much to bear. She leaves a “Dear Bradley” letter on what’s left on their pillow after the latest accident with her new weapons system, and runs off with Dr. Martin. The freedom the doctor promises her turns out to be not another word for “nothing left to lose,” but instead, another word for “captivity in his mountain lab in the mountains” (Skullcrusher Mountain). Martin describes to her the vision of the future he has held since he was about yea high (The Future Soon). His vision of her future, though, involves the technology he is developing, which aims to accelerate her evolutionary process artificially, leaving her as the Omega-form, the Star-Child, the final ideal form of life as it was intended to be, or some such tosh. (I don’t know, I don’t read sci-fi.)

Horrified, Betty engages her stealth devices and jet propulsion systems and tries to make a break for it. SCARFACE, Dr. Martin’s T-1000 assistant, tracks her down and casts her into a convenient dungeon thousands of feet underground, where she is startled to hear the lamentations of a sentient giant squidlike sea creature (I Crush Everything). The dungeon abuts an immense subterranean lagoon where the creature now abides. The sea creature reveals, in its hauntingly beautiful squid language, that it is LAURA, object of Dr. Martin’s childhood affections and subject of his first tests of his evolutionary device.

Bradley, meanwhile, has discovered that Betty has left him. Appalled by his own behavior in driving her away, he looks up Dr. Martin’s secret lair in the telephone directory and rushes over to try and win his wife back. One elaborate dramatic showdown later, Dr. Martin fires his diabolical ray at Bradley, reversing his evolutionary process. Bradley becomes more and more simian (De-Evolving). The doctor sends Bradley down into the same dungeon. But as they reach the dungeons, Betty discovers her Go-Go-Gadget-Convenient-Device-That-Bores-Holes-In-Dungeon-Walls. Water rushes into the dungeon, and Betty and Bradley escape. Dr. Martin manages to make it into his own golden submarine, but as he tries to make his getaway, the submersible is seized by an octopus, some kind of octopus (or squidlike creature), tearing its shell apart, letting the lagoon get in. The submarine undergoes rapid depressurization; Dr. Martin’s insides are made outside (Octopus).

Betty and Bradley reach the secret laboratories. Bradley’s evolutionary decay continues to worsen. Betty tries to cheer him up, telling him she’ll still love him even after her artificially increased number of chromosome pairs is about six times that of his artificially decreased number (When I’m Twenty-Five or Six to Four).

Sorry. That was awful. Lemme try that again.

Betty and Bradley reach the secret laboratories. Bradley’s evolutionary decay continues to worsen. He is becoming a more and more simple lifeform. As she watches him, Betty discovers phylogeny recapitulating ontogeny (obscure bio joke — here’s the Wikipedia link). The reversing evolution renders him closer and closer in appearance to an embryo she seems to recognize. Her heart skips a beat as she realizes that Bradley must be her long-lost love from the incubators.

(Actually, he probably isn’t. All embryos tend to look somewhat similar. But let’s not tell her that now.)

In her moment of joy, she is struck down with the knowledge that she is helpless to save the man she loves from turning into the prokaryote she loves. They are rescued by Scarface the T-1000, who now recognizes their right to exist. Wordlessly he turns the ray onto Bradley, who turns back into a monkey before their eyes — but evolves no further, due to a technology failure that is extremely convenient for plot purposes. Instead, with Scarface’s assistance, they make a copy of Bradley’s brain and insert it into one of those cyborgs that seem to be lying about in mad scientists’ lairs. Cyborg-Bradley apologizes to Bionic-Implant-Betty for his behavior, or at least for the behavior of his meat form (My Monkey).

And they all lived happily ever after until the overrides that Scarface implanted into Cyborg-Bradley’s system triggered and transformed him into a ruthless killing machine, the first of many such machines that brought about humanity’s downfall in the robot wars that Dr. Martin had envisioned since he was yea high.

The end.

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.

[odeo=http://odeo.com/audio/11247563/view]

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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.

When the Jet's
Getting set
  To take flight,
And when Stack
Gets on track,
  Things look bright.
And a shot block by Dampier
Will let the world know the Mavs are here.
And when Dirk
Gets to work
With his fade,
Any shot
From any spot
Gets made,
And with Harris and Howard,
Coach Avery gets showered
With buckets full of Gatorade.

[SPOKEN: Okay, so they don't really do that in basketball. Still, you know, anyway.]

All the teams
  That we meet
    Say we're great,
Though it seems
  We can't beat
    Golden State.
But the Mavs will get that ring,
So face it Kobe, that's just our thing.
Tell the rest
Of the West
To be afraid,
Bring the stretch-
Er to fetch
D-Wade.
And Tim Duncan and 'Sheed
May get ticked off and T'd,
But our mayor's planning our parade.

And when Anthony Johnson --
[SPOKEN: They what!?
You're kidding me!
Um, okay, who else is on the roster?]
Devean George and Cro' are vital,
They'll help to lead us to win the title.
[SPOKEN: Even I don't buy that.
Okay, what rhymes with Mensah-Bonsu?]
We've never lost* in games where Maurice Ager's played.
[SPOKEN: Buckner, Buckner, bo-Buckner,
Banana-fanna-fo --]
The Dallas Mavericks on parade!

* may not be true

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.

[odeo=http://odeo.com/audio/5329683/view]

Lyrics are after the jump.

It seems like every week
Someone on my street
Is throwing out a futon,
As I make my way,
Almost every day
They lie in wait.
And I wonder as I go by
And see the cushions piled up high
What my neighbors are doing,
In their little flats
To go through futons at
Such an alarming rate!

(additional lyrics by Bry)
It’s the rubbish of strangers,
It’s the stuff they throw out there,
All the rubbish of strangers
Tells me too much about their lives,
All the fears they’ve faced
And the dreams they’ve chased,
Oh, it’s such a waste
That all of those’ll
Sit outside
With their drawstrings tied,
So undignified
At the disposal
Of strangers,
The rubbish of strangers,
Strangers.

Thanks go out to the Doifter for good-naturedly endorsing this message, even though I didn’t inform her that I was going to tamper with her creation until it was already recorded and uploaded. And I should not be allowed within sixty feet of a pun again.

Edited, 2008-06-24: Sheet music: The Rubbish of Strangers (in C Major).

Chords: (Note that this was played in the key of C and artificially shifted up to F major, if I recall correctly a year and a half later. The Doifter’s original is in D, I think. Never mind.)

C                     F
  It's the rubbish of strangers,
                          Cm        C
It's the trash they throw out there.
                   F
All the rubbish of strangers
                   C    C#dim G7 (I might make it a Dmin instead)
Tells me too much about their lives,
            Dm
And all the fears they've faced
        Bb
And the dreams they've chased,
         Dm7b5 (aka "JoCo half-dim")
Oh, it's such a waste
            C
That all of those'll
Dm
Sit outside
           Bb
With their drawstrings tied,
   Dm7b5
So undignified
          Db
At the disposal
   C         Fm
Of strangers,
               F#dim     Fm
The rubbish of strangers,
C
Strangers.

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.) 

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

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.