The Dark Knight / Toy Story Trailer

Apparently movie trailer mashups is a thing. This one is absolutely brilliant:

The Circle: Episode 2

Second episode of The Circle:

Episodes four and five are premiering April 16th!

“Mr. Fancy Pants” by Jonathan Coulton at PAX East 2010

The most entertaining part of PAX East’s Saturday night concert was probably Jonathan Coulton playing “Mr. Fancy Pants” on the Distract-o-tron.

I’m very impressed by how he’s able to keep the drum beat going throughout just by tapping on that thing.

(Many thanks to uploader acmidgett!)

Finally, a Wireless Reading Device

iPad hype (which I am absorbing as fast as possible) does nevertheless remind me of Ben Hoffman’s infoMania Tech Report on the Kindle:

Jonathan Coulton and Paul & Storm play TMBG’s Flood

I saw Paul & Storm (very good) and Jonathan Coulton (very very good, especially in “Coultron” form with Paul & Storm and Metroid Metal’s rhythm section) play at PAX East this past weekend.

Little did I know that, with a little Internet digging, I could uncover videos of them playing They Might Be Giants’ album Flood, in its entirety, at a show in Chicago last year. I made a playlist so you can watch it all back-to-back:

Many many many thanks to uploader MrSctw.

I always thought of TMBG as just this weird (though awesome) niche band that I and some of my friends were in to, so it’s very odd (though obvious in retrospect, given their trail-blazing position) to see them as a point of reference for other musicians.

More Paul & Storm / They Might Be Giants stuff: It Might Be X-Mas, a Christmas album written in the style of TMBG. I recommend at least listening to “Christmas Eve Eve.”

The Circle: Episode 1

I’m counting down the weeks until the premiere of episodes 4 and 5 of The Circle, a five-episode TV series that my friend Blackheart (née Daniel Byers) and pals made out of pirates, Tech House, and various other good bits of Brown University.

It’s a modern fantasy, fae-and-gas masks sort of story. Well done, and remarkably well done considering the resources they had to make it.

I’ll post the second episode next week and the third after that, though you can just go to http://www.thecirclefilm.com/ and watch them now if you like. The 4th and 5th episodes premiere on April 16th as part of Brown’s prefrosh weekend.

Bird Song Trail: Geese Migration

Geese are loud, yo.

Bird Song Trail: Tufted Titmouse and Chickadee

The first of three videos from our trip to the Mendon Ponds Park Bird Song Trail a few weeks back. This shows a tufted titmouse and then a chickadee eating seeds out of my hand.

We usually bring just sunflower seeds and get chickadees, but this year we discovered that the birds are crazy for peanuts. Besides the titmouse, we also had two species of nuthatch eating from our hands.

Update: Meh. Blogger video currently broken. Grumpy internal escalation initiated.

Update #2: Replaced with a YouTube video instead.

Old Crow Medicine Idol

ATL 5 @ Yahoo! Video

Rachel Efron: Home to Me

“Home to Me” performed by Rachel Efron. From the 4AM CD release party at Café du Nord.

I saw Rachel Efron when she played Jupiter in Berkeley a year or so ago. She has a great mellow jazzy-pop sound and a beautiful voice.

She’s touring in support of her new album, 4AM, and is playing tonight in Cambridge at the Lily Pad.

I’ve found two more videos on YouTube from the 4AM CD release party in SF: “A Fool Could Find a Way” and “Goodnight My Dear” (which is from her first album, Say Goodbye).

Twitter is Down for Hitler

They’d been doing so well, too, until this morning.

(Thx to Cait for introducing me to this meme. See also: Hitler as a Teaching Assistant)

Swedish Big Band Hip-Hop IS Better with Banjo

Buy on AmazonMovits!

Saw these guys on Colbert. Their MySpace (which has four songs to listen to) says their album is coming to iTunes soon. (Update: now on Amazon, though!)

I’m always a fan of horns and banjo, which is why I believe that King Oliver had it right. (Though Louis Armstrong doesn’t hurt, either.)

Update, 8/1: Correction. On further inspection, it is a guitjo. Even better.