What Am I Doing?

27 06 2008

Currently, Colby is at Camp TImberlane… for boys. I strongly encourage anybody reading this to find him and stick a sock in his mouth and kidnap him. Here’s a picture of what he looks like:

Colby

Colby

He is clearly a dangerous killing machine. He must be stopped at all costs.

Find him.



Logo/Bean Dip

18 06 2008

First I said I’d blog about Josh. So here’s a funny story about Josh:

Today, Josh and I were both sitting in the staff office, and I writing an e-mail and he’s all like, “Are you blogging?” and I’m all like “No!” and he’s like, “Will you blog about me?” And I’m like, “K”.

Also, Colby wanted me to come up with a World of Arcana logo so that he can make “T-shirts and pillowcases”. I’ve kind of fulfilled his request. Because the only art tool at my disposal is Paint, it’s not great, but it’s a nice rough outline:

Anti-Colby Crew

I look forward to seeing the T-shirts.

Oh, and Leslie, if you’re reading this - the bean dip was delicious.



Hatred

16 06 2008

I hate Colby. I hate Colby.

So does the guy at the laundromat.

I do not hate Noah.

But the creepy guy who lives next to the movie theater does.



Vote or Die. (This is totally a threat).

29 05 2008

VOTING IS NOW OPEN FOR THE MASTERS OF SONG-FU COMPETITION. GO THERE NOW AND CAST-A-CAST-A-WAY YOUR VOTE FOR EAST CAROLINA.

Okay, so if the hideousness of caps lock blinds you, now would be the perfect time/week for you to head on over to Quick Stop Entertainment to vote yourself up a nice delicious piece of East Carolina in the Masters of Song-Fu competition. You’ll find us under the heading “East Carolina” and the slow-dance picture. Our theme song is called “East Carolina in the UK”, and here’s a little lyrics cheat sheet:

“East Carolina in the UK” Theme Song

A rock band from America
On their way to London town
Down on their luck, but they’ll make some some bucks
And turn their luck around

East Carolina in the UK
But they still do things like the USA
They don’t come for teatime when they’re called
They don’t think that cricket’s a sport at all

They’re playing in their band
They’re workin hard and havin fun
They’re gaining fans, across the land
And all having all sorts of zany adventures

East Carolina in the UK
But they still do things like the USA
When they were offered bangers and mash
They just threw them in the trash

But they hate the British people the most
Everyone except for Gustav Holst

East Carolina in the UK
But they still do things like the USA
Not everyone thinks their music is groovy
But they’ll kill just like in a Hollywood movie

East Carolina in the UK
But they still do things like the USA
East Carolina in the UK
But they still do things like the USA

Did I mention that you should totally go vote for us in the Masters of Song-Fu competition? Oh I did? Sorry, I must be starting to sound pretty annoying then*. Well, here’s something to redeem myself: Just for you special special readers, here is the extended version of the theme song that was too hot to make it into the official submission. If contains 12 music-packed seconds of never-before-heard music that the band has deemed too raunchy for the official theme song. Enjoy!

“East Carolina in the UK” Theme Song (Extended Version) Download

We’ll try to get out the theme song we wrote to a completely different show, because, in all honesty, that’s going to blow your minds. Peace out.

P.S. Who’s pumped for season finale of Lost tonight? If you guessed me, you would totally be correct.

*Did I mention that you should also totally tell all of your friends to vote for us too?

P.P.S. “‘Til ne’er e’er o’er ‘m lo’er ‘o co’er” is my new quote of the week, and I’ve probably used it two dozen times already.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that, as of writing this, East Carolina is in 3rd piece in the voting, with 13% of the votes (which is actually a not-too-impressive 20), so apparently we did something right/have a lot of friends.



The Magical 11 Seconds

26 05 2008

So Stu and I recorded our song for Masters of Song Fu Round 1 today. As you may remember from the last post, we had brilliantly masterminded the tempo so that our theme came in at exactly 1 minute. For some reason between Sonar and Audacity and iTunes, the song picked up an extra 11 seconds, which was mega-weird, but we were finally able to edit that down to exactly 1 minute, or on some computers 59 seconds, depending on whether you round up or down. Remember to listen for the song on Wednesday and VOTE FOR EAST CAROLINA.

Additionally, I mentioned that at some point I’d release our alternative-show theme song, which I most likely will still do (If I don’t wuss out or forget to). In addition, we may post the full-extra 11 second-version at some point in time, so that you too may experience the original artistic vision we had in our heads.

So yeah. Not much else has happened since Thursday or whenever I wrote the last post. I bought some pants today. And some shoes. Yea.



Pilot, Part 1.

23 05 2008

So yesterday Stuart and I stated working on our challenge to write the theme song for our life’s television show. We think we have all the words and music ready, and we’ll do the recording Monday and Tuesday (cutting it close since we live on the wild side). The song has to come in under a minute, so we did this really cool “reverse engineering”, where we figured out how many measures there were in the song, and then multiplied by 4 beats in a measure, and then set that as the beats per minute, so that we have a song that’s exactly 1 minute long. Awesome.

We did a lot of listening to great TV theme songs (Laverne & Shirley is Stuart’s favorite), and we think we’ve figured out what makes the great themes great. I don’t want to give too much away here, in case any of our opponents are reading this [shifty glanes], but here’s one interesting thing we did discover: every single theme we listened to was in the key of F major… weird.

Oh, and also, we have an entire alternate set of lyrics for an alternate show we came up with. We’ll post the alternate theme here after we submit the real one for your listening pleasure.

Anything else I can think of? Nope, not really. Pretty lackluster week. Over and out.



Acceptence…By 6:00 EST

19 05 2008

Today, between research for my massive Economics paper, I snuck a quick look at my e-mail inbox, and was delighted to discover that East Carolina had been accepted into the Masters of Song Fu competition!

However, our spot would be given up to another artists if I did not submit a photo and biography by 6:00 EST…

I was soon forced to close the window and continue my investigation of unemployment rates of the past 9 quarters (including and not including part-time workers!), and at 3:15 PM, when school let out, I was both elated that we had made the competition, and scared out of my mind that I wouldn’t be able to find a computer to submit the information. Luckily, I went over to my friend’s house, and he let me use his computer, so I think East Carolina’s going to be okay for the contest.

Then I went into my friend’s basement and proceeded to lose 4 Mario Kart races in a row.*

*I did win both songs I did in Guitar Hero though, so it’s okay.



Update Update Update

18 05 2008

It’s been awhile since the last update, partially due to my busy schedule. Since my last post, I mainly was not writing because I needed to devote most of my energy into studying for the AP Economic exams. Luckily for you, the reader, this was not all a waste, because I did write a new song while I was studying - the economist’s love song, currently titled “Have Faith (feat. Adam Smith)”, and I may record that and put it up at some point in the future.

Also last week we had a band concert, where I was required to play the crazy synth parts in Peaches en Regalia among other things, which was fun, yet crazy tricky (I had to play on two keyboards at one to keep up with the song. But I have gotten positive feedback, so I guess it went good).

In addition, I have finally beaten Sam & Max 205: What’s New, Beelzebub? I had mostly been distracted and too lazy to have gotten around to the end. Once again, I will reiterate my belief that Season 2 hasn’t had any highs like there were in Season 1. I don’t know if Telltale is planning a Season 3 (I can only assume that they will), I hope that they can figure out what made Season 1 better than Season 2, and fix it. I’m not quite sure myself. One theory I have is that, since Season 2 had more of a planned story-arc, and Season 1 was more self-contained, that finishing an Episode in Season 1 just gave you more closure and a greater sense of accomplishment than just solving the next step in a series. The other issue I really have with Season 2 is that even though the idea was to create a fuller story-arc, to me it doesn’t really make sense. The overarching idea of the season is that Bosco is missing, and you need to find him. However, this isn’t really a driving force - who cares if Bosco’s missing? That’s not the thing that you can drive approx. 15 hours of gameplay from. Anyway, there goes my minor rant.

And finally, me, Stuart, and friends have finished recording “The Chemistry Album”. Stuart and I are thinking about potentially putting all of our East Carolina albums on the site for free download soon, so perhaps you will be able to hear all of the new tracks in a few days.



World of Arcana Theme Song

9 05 2008

I hope in the upcoming days to upload a lot more music to the site for you to listen to (both solo-stuff and some more East Carolina). Right now, I thought it would be appropriate to write a “theme song” for my blog, so here I present the 20-minute power-project World of Arcana Theme

World of Arcana (Theme) - Download “World of Arcana Theme”

For some reason, it came out sounding like it was poorly compressed, even though it wasn’t - weird. Still having podcast issues, but hope to resolve those soon. There was another East Carolina track posted on that page, so check that out. I may do some more updates to “Things That Are Good” - ojos. And finally, keep checking for when I finally put up the mysterious “Aether” page…



Jonathan Coulton Concert Wrapup

4 05 2008

It is a scary, hallowing experience to be in a room of 299 other people who are as nerdy as you. You know you are with your own type when:

  1. The guy standing in front of you outside is wearing a Portal t-shirt.
  2. You see at least two other people in Coach Z t-shirts.
  3. The guy sitting next to you is discussing with his friend how Transformers was so beautiful that he cried.
  4. As Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum plays while people are sitting down, you see at least half of the people in the theater mouthing along the words with you.
  5. All that Paul and Storm need to say is “They Might Be…” and the crowd has already erupted into mad applause.
  6. Everybody knows what he means when storm says “Can I haz five thousand dollars?”
  7. People know where to put the handclaps in “Shop Vac” and the correct lyrics.
  8. The person sitting next to you knows the entire Code Monkey dance.

Obviously, the concert was incredible, and I thought the people at the Lakeshore Theatre did a great job of running the evening, compared to other concert venues. Interestingly, it being a comedy club, I think there may have been some people at the show who thought that some songs were funny that never particularly struck me as funny, like “I Crush Everything”, but whatever.

I didn’t manage to get too many pictures, but there are some pretty good YouTube videos other people took of the evening:

From dave of guitar lessons fame:

Other Videos

I’m also working on a little bit of a fan-project for people who were at the show (yes, I’m that much of a loser), so stay tuned for that.