More Nerd News in Brief

Within the last 12 hours I have received somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 spam messages in the old Hipster, please! Inbox. I’ve never really had a problem with unsolicited mail before, so I’m a little – how you say – confuselated.

If only I knew someone with a background in spam who could answer a few questions for me.

Yeah, if you wanna know about dinosaurs you talk to a paleontologist; if you wanna know about spam you talk to YTCracker.

But first, More Nerd News in Brief.

• More nerd ink: Okay, this cat rivals Router for extremely geeky tattoos. Behold his 3/4 sleeve of Mario art. Looks like he’s planning to get a Zelda sleeve on the other arm. Thanks to Matt for pointing me toward this.
• Speaking of Router: Ms. Ritchie’s Fort Worth Weekly cover story is now available online. The article itself is quite interesting; hell, even I was surprised to find that Router has submitted an audition tape for a VH1 show. In addition to a lot of back-and-forth with Router, the piece also has a few nice quotes from T-byte, YTCracker. and Dan Lamoureux. Take a gander
• Great Scot!: Church also found a brief mention of Router and MC Frontalot in The Scotsman of all places! It seems “the Edinburgh Interactive Festival's screenings director is interested in having nerdcore next year.” Strange but true.
• Lower case, no dots: mc chris has gotten his fair share of press of late, with two new articles popping up recently. Pinky found a nice Q&A session with mc in Format Magazine that I highly recommend to anyone who considers himself a fan. Likewise, MC Tanuki found a similar interview at Newsarama that’s also a pretty damn good read.
• But wait, there’s more: mc chris was also recently listed as one of the top 10 bands on this year’s Warped Tour on the tour's official site! Does this mean that our private little nerd party is officially over? Probably.
• Bloop, blip, bleep: Pixelh8’s 2nd album, The Boy with the Digital Heart, is set to shake up the chiptune world in a couple of ways. First, “the entire album, every note, every drum beat, every sound [has been] programmed [from] scratch.” The project will also be featured in its own documentary detailing the making of the album, the myriad of software used to create it, and the artist himself. Interesting stuff, to say the least.
• Boys on film: While we’re on the subject of video, I’d be a fool not to direct you toward 32 brand-spanking-new clips of Glenn Case and The Half Racks performing at The Comet. These were recorded on the 3rd of this month, and you can check out the full set list at Glenn’s site. (Be sure to peep their cover of “Here Comes Your Man.”)
• More Wrock: Church has had a busy week. In addition to the thankless task of finding me cool shit to post and, y’know, actually working at his real job, he’s also managed to damn-near convince me to try and construct my own Beer Brewing Bender. Oh, and he edited together this charming bit of performance footage of The Whomping Willows. He even scores extra credit for the running commentary throughout.
  

Radio Free Hipster Ep. 28: Interoffice Memorandum

Work sucks.

That was, in fact, the original title for this episode. But I felt it pertinent to change it. ‘Cause, y’know, I ripped Mike Judge off enough in this edition without stealing his tag line.

Work is rough and few of us enjoy it, but I reckon that’s what makes it work. We do it because we have to. Because we can’t make money doing what we love: watching TV and smoking weed.

Download Radio Free Hipster Ep. 28: Interoffice Memorandum Size: 40.5 MB Running Time: 44:18

Show Notes:

Intro: Baddd Spellah – “Radio Free Hipster Theme (feat. Beefy)”
Spellah and Beef must’ve fallen on hard times. Shit, they even made a theme song for me!

Track 1: Dual Core – “Dull Boy”
Now that, my friends, is what you call a sing-along chorus.

Z’s 1st interlude: “A nice, secure government job.”
Don’t believe the hype; there’s no work going on at the government center.

Track 2: Jonathan Richman – “Government Center”
Jon has a song for all occasions. Case in point.

Track 3: Jonathan Coulton – “Code Monkey”
“Code Monkey not crazy, just proud.”

Track 4: Bill Hicks / Glenn Case “Stapler”
The office romance of this track is both refreshing and… confusing, but you gotta give it up to Glenn for running with the source material.

Track 5: The Goondocks – “Hit Snooze”
The Goons (specifically this track) actually inspired this episode's theme. If you hate it, blame JMIC!

Track 6: Optimus Rhyme – “Obey the Moderator”
This live acoustic version of “Obey the Moderator” comes courtesy of Alienbobz.com.

Z’s 2nd interlude: “I hesitate to say ‘classic.’”
Are we all really working for the weekend? That’s just a reflection of our sluggish economy.

Track 7: Billy Bragg – “St. Monday”
This one is more “music nerd” than “nerd music,” but I think it fits well.

Track 8: Bill Hicks / Beefy – “Outside Paradise”
The Hicks bit before Beefy’s track was supposed to go before “Hit Snooze,” but it just wouldn’t fit. Now you know.

Track 9: Kool Keith – “Get Off My Elevator”
Does anyone ever really know what the fuck Keith is talking about? Ever?

Track 10: Shael Riley – “Fuck You! Get in My Store”
Sheal’s best title? Surprisingly, no.

Track 11: Busdriver – “Unemployed Black Astronaut”
Once again, thanks to Pink for hooking me up with this one.

Track 12: Hermes Conrad – “The Bureaucrat Song”
“I am Bender, baby, please insert liquor!”

Z’s final interlude: “Extraordinarily dorky”
This describes both Biz Markie and the show itself.

Track 13: Canibus – “Shove This Jay-Oh-Bee (feat. Biz Markie)”
Again, not really nerdy, but damned if it ain’t fitting!

So there you have it: musical ruminations on the working world. Did I miss some good ones? I’m sure I did. How about you holler at me and let me know what I should’ve included?

That’s simply the nature of our relationship. We’re cool like that.

Nerd News in Brief

“You take the good, you take the bad / You take them both, and there you have / The facts of life.”

So states the theme song from one of my favorite sitcoms, and, truthfully, the same can be said for this edition of Nerd News in Brief.

Why, this morning alone I’ve been informed that beloved television icon Merv Griffin has shuffled off this mortal coil (sad face), and that low-level boogeyman Karl Rove has announced that he’ll pack up his brimstone and magic hat full of poisonous spiders at month’s end (happy face).

Those sort of conflicting events really make a cat feel ambivalent, y’know?

• Even werewolves get the blues: Over the weekend, my pals Matt and Church hit up a Vienna, VA Wrock show featuring Snidget, The Whomping Willows, and The Remus Lupins. Matt did a really nice post-gig write-up, and it appears as though everyone involved had a really great time. That is until some assholes smashed in the bands’ van window and made off with a pair of iPods and about 2 large in cash (all belonging to The Remus Lupins). If you’ve got a couple extra bucks lying around, you might wanna consider picking up their latest disk I Was a Teenage Werewolf to help the Lupins over this unfortunate hump. WizardRock.org will also be donating 50% of any profits made from their Cafe Press store to the band (with the other half going to the HP Alliance as previously promised.) Dig deep, folks.
• Post-PWNED: After a lot of ponderous soul-searching, Hex Warrior has elected to postpone Nerdapalooza. While new dates and other solid details are still in the works, the crew is currently soliciting for “COMMITTED people to take on coordinator positions amongst our ranks.” You can hit up the official site for the full story, and to make a donation to the cause.
• Til All Are One: Okay, so I sort of started off on a downer today. Fear not: here’s an Optimus Prime casemod that Matt found that will surely help take the sting away.
• Game Head sound vaguely pornographic: Spike TV showed a little love to nerdcore hip-hop at Comic-Con by talking a bit with the featured artists at the pivotal concert. The results of the taping can currently be viewed right here. The piece features a freestyle from Karl and a little Q&A with YT in the post-4:00 area.
• Because “too much of a good thing” is an urban myth: Last week, Glenn Case added another 50 songs to his All Songs directory, bringing the grand total to 370 tracks. That's plenty more covers, demos, and original material for you, and another year’s worth of podcast fodder for me.
  
• What? No Router?: Church hipped me to this very odd collection of nerdy (read: scholastic) tattoos from ScienceBlogs. Big up to the cat with the Periodic Table; that's nerdcore!
• What Would mc Do?: Dan recently posted some nice new mc chris clips to YouTube. Both were shot by Fanatical back in April for the documentary, and, while the first is pretty standard performance fair, the last “contains some humble words of wisdom” that Dan decided to share.
• Please explain: Since I started off a bit somber today, I’m gonna end on a… high note? Well, I’m gonna end with something that’ll definitely get you thinking. It’s a German PS3 commercial that funky49 found and shared with me. I… I really don’t know what to say about it. It raises several distinct questions, the most prominent being: what the fuck does this have to do with the PS3? Enjoy.