The Annekenstein Monster

Testing Testing Is This Thing On?

I came across this Odiogo thing that allows you to turn your blog posts into podcasts, or into audio which you can download, listen to, or whatever.  I thought I'd try it out.

I'm posting the opening monologue from last summer's Castrato sketch from Sketch 22.  I want to see if it does justice to the text.  Heck, this could revolutionize the way we perform our sketches!!

Have a listen to this.

IL Castrato, Scene 1.

Lights up.

A dressing room, such as in any theater anywhere.

Il Castrato sits at the dressing table. He addresses the audience.

Castrato:
Alas, my friends, attend this tale of woe.
For I, gelded on fame's throne lately sat
For tunes warbl'd, am falsetto castrat.
Cel'brated by all, like angel's rejoice
Melodies sung on high in pure of voice.
A pre-pubescent stunt, doctor performed:
My testicles chopp'd when not yet tenor
Left me permanently baritone deaf!
Now, my talents unequall'd, fame unmatch'd
Where 'ere I arrive, E! News is dispatch'd.
Fame, wealth, power. Invites to parties all.
Would give't all up just once to rub my balls.

How Many Carrots?

Here's a new game on The Annekenstein Monster:  How Many Carrots?

For our inaugural gameplay, the question is:

How many carrots can Julia Roberts stuff in her mouth at the same time?



Answers to choose from:

1) 1

2) 2 or less

3) 3 or more

4) when you say "carrots" do you really mean something else?

Tune in tomorrow for the correct answer!

Sad Jon

This may be the saddest garfield minus garfield strip ever:

Lady Bird MacDonald

Google Images is now hosting thousands 10 million! Time-Life photos.

I thought I'd take a browse through images from 1965, the year I was born.  When I came across this one of Lady Bird Johnson...


... I was reminded of this one from my family collection...

Transgender Remembrance Day

Did you know that today is Transgender Remembrance Day?

Me neither.



Lest We Forget.

I hate movie scenes like this...

I was watching a not very good movie last night.  The second Nicolas Cage Treasure Hunter movie, whatever it's called.

The following would be considered a spoiler, if you haven't seen the movie yet.

At one point Nic kidnaps the POTUS. Nobody really knows it was Nic who's kidnapped him.
Another character, a high-ranking FBI guy (played by Harvey Keitel) who is kind of keeping tabs on Nic's actions, gets a phone call to inform him of this information.  This is how the scene is played:

Harvey, getting out of an FBI vehicle, gets a phone call.

Harvey (answers):  Hello?

There is silence as the other end talks.  We assume he is being told "The President has been kidnapped!"

Harvey:  He was what?

Shorter silence as we assume the other end says "He was kidnapped!"

Without saying another word, Harvey hangs up the phone. He thinks about it for a second, then realizes who is behind it, and says:

Harvey: Nic's character's name!!

I really hate scenes like this.  If you were a high-ranking FBI agent and you just got a phone call that said "The President of the United States has just been kidnapped!", would you hang up before you asked a few "who, when, where" type questions?  You probably would.

But this guy gets the phone call, makes no comment to the guy who phoned him, and hangs up.

I hate movie scenes like this.

Chimp - The Living End - Music Video

So, Dave Stewart and I formed a band a decade or so ago. The band is called Chimp. Way back then, we recorded a baker's dozen of original songs. We recorded them in my living room, using a 4-track cassette recorder we rented from Toomb's Music for a week. We also rented a microphone and stand and, I think, a guitar pedal. Dave played bass (mostly) and I played guitar (mostly). We didn't have a drummer. We used pre-recorded drumbeats from my cheap Casio keyboard.
After the week was up, we still had a bit of work to do, so we borrowed a 4-track cassette recorder from Wayne Dunsford.
So, in two weeks or so, we recorded these songs, as best we could, and mixed them down to cassette. We dubbed the cassette a few times and handed them out to friends.
And that was that.
Then, last spring, we decided we'd try and find the original 4-track cassette, digitize them and try and clean them up as best we could with an audio program on my computer. The cassette was found in a shoebox in a closet in my house, and over the next couple of months we cleaned them up, removing hiss, remixing, restructuring (in a limited way) the songs as we saw fit. We got Jason Rogerson to come on board as a fresh set of ears and together, the three of us remixed 12 of the songs. We also recorded a few new vocal bits at Moses Media and inserted them in a couple of songs.
So, after all that, we had 12 songs we thought were pretty rocking, in a lo-fi way. We decided we'd put them on a CD, get a small number made and throw them out to the world. We called the CD Thundercrack! as an homage to this movie.
At that point, the idea of a CD release party came up, and it was decided that Baba's would be a great place to have it. Not having played the songs in about a decade, and not having any rocking equipment to play on, we came up with the idea that it would be cool if other local bands played cover versions of our songs at the CD release. So, we got a few bands/people to play some of our songs at the CD release.
It's this Saturday night at 9 at Babas. Musicians performing include John Connolly, Jason and the Forget-Me-Nots (the aforementioned Jason Rogerson and a compilation of his musical associates), The Love Junkies, Pat Deighan & the Orb Weavers, Lennie MacPherson, Riley's Lane (a ladies celtic group) and String Theory.
A couple of months ago on the PEI Locals music webforum I solicited any/all bands the invitation to join the evening and play a song or two. From that solicitation, the band String Theory bravely stepped forward and offered to play a song, song-unheard. I can't wait to hear their cover of Killer Bees. String Theory will also be playing at Babas later Saturday night, after the CD release wraps up.
Wade Lynch was also going to perform a song, but had to cancel due to a conflicting schedule. I'll miss hearing his interpretation of Boy Likes Girl.

So, that's the story of Chimp.
A couple of weeks ago, we thought "wouldn't it be cool to have a video for a couple of the songs?" Not really wanting to invest time and energy into shooting new footage, we thought it would be fun to create a video using pre-existing film we had. That is how the video for "The Living End" (below) came about.
Dave and I have known each other for over 20 years. I met my wife through my friendship with Dave, or I met Dave through my friendship with my wife. I can't quite remember.
Anyway, just before Dave and I became friends, Dave shot an 8mm film called "Goodbye, Columbia" starring his friends. Shortly after we became friends he shot another 8mm film called "Attack of the Angry Moon Cats", starring his friends, which now included me.
A few years later, Dave and I wrote and made a short-film called "Florid", starring our friends.
We took a key scene from Florid, and some of the "actiony" parts from Goodbye Columbia and Attack, and threw them all together to create this video. It's supposed to be the end-credits of a movie called The Living End, but I don't know how well that concept plays out.
Anyway, lots of interesting images, a couple of shots of a younger Dave and younger Rob, and some brief clips of Charlottetown landmarks that no longer exist.

Here, then, is the world premiere of the music video for The Living End by Chimp.

Now, Where Did I Put That Dance Belt?

According to yesterday's CBC News article about the upcoming summer season of the Charlottetown Festival:

Sketch-22 heads for the Big Dance

Local comedy troupe Sketch-22 has been picked up by the festival. The group will perform at the Mack Theatre.

"This is awesome we're so excited, we put so much work into this
show for five years, I think this is sort of a sign to us our hard work
is paying off," said founding member Andrew Sprague.

"This validates Sketch-22, and because of this we promise to make much less fun of the Confederation Centre of the Arts."

Sketch-22 is well known for its sometimes crude spoofs of Island life.

The Big Dance?  Anyway, I was just impressed in the size of the font we received compared to any of the other performances mentioned.

And, while we (Sketch22) have been assaulted in the past by critical reviews from Guardian and CBC commenters, I have a feeling we've just entered into a whole new realm and level of attack.  To wit:

In the comments to the above-linked article, WILMOTDAVE had this to say about the news:

Sketch 22?
Wow how new and innovative to justify poor comedy at the expense of the rest of us.
One day Obama which was for change and now going backward to a cesspool of asinine and weak comedy.

With that Obama mention, is he insinuating that our comedy is akin to the Presidency of George Bush?  If so: Ouch!

Still, I am inclined to have "cesspool of asinine and weak comedy" added to any future PR for our group.

Let the backlash continue!!

Chimp - Thundercrack! - November 15

Wait for it!!

Rob's All-Voice Cover Song Idea

So, for a long, long, time, I've had this idea where I get a big group of people together, a choir, and we dissect a song and each of us in the choir take one dissection of that song and interpret it using only our mouths. So, one person (or more, depending on difficulty) would make the bass guitar sounds, some more would "sing" the percussion sounds, others would sing the guitar sounds, etc.
I've had a desire to do this for a long time, as I've said.  I thought it would be challenging and original. As recently as last week, I was thinking about what song would be a good one to do.

But now, this morning, my desire to do it has disappeared because, this morning, I saw this video.  And now that it's done, I don't have to do think about it any more.