Spotted some online Engrish...

I was curious about an order we received from Yong-In City, South Korea. I did a search for the city and came across the city's tourism web site. On it, they advertise the local amusement park.

Unfortunate choice of words for the top bit... or maybe they just cater to illicit affairs.

http://en.yonginsi.net/cms.asp?code=E2030020

And the bottom bit: Amazing Water World, Caribbean Bay! ...complete with authentic Caribbean snow park?

My big stage debut

I'll have a version with HQ audio recorded with professional audio equipment from the front of the stage posted at a later date (that one will go to YouTube), but for now, here's a Facebook video of me doing my comedy routine yesterday with the Raspberry Jam Band:



I don't do the best Fudd in the world; that's for sure. I wanted to be sure it was loud enough on the mic too, which didn't help.

Many thanks to Will Perkins for holding my camera.

All Iranian ballet dancers have tremendous ears, which melt in the nitric acid splendidly

That was the first sentence of one of the "word-by-word stories" a bunch of us used to do online in the early and mid-1980s. I thought it might be fun to start one here. What do you think?

There are rules to follow:

• You do not add punctuation after your word. Instead, the person entering the next word decides whether to put a comma, period, semicolon, colon or dash after your word. (Example entry would look like: ", and".)

• Yes, sometimes you just have to write "a(n)" or "the". It's a boring job, but someone's gotta do it.

• If you enter your word but find that someone else had written one at the same time and beat you to the punch, it is your duty to delete or edit your word to ensure that the sentence still makes grammatical sense (logical sense is entirely optional!).

After a while, I will compile the words into the main post and purge the individual entries, to prevent the comment list from becoming unreasonably long.

I'll leave the first word up to whoever wishes to begin!

Musical challenge

Although I never received any musical challenges from the "Keeper's Monthly Musical Challenge" thing on Paul's blog, either because he has begun working again (yay!) or nobody came up with any good ideas (boo!), there is, in fact, a big musical challenge coming up for me.

Saturday, I'm going to be rehearsing with the Raspberry Jam Band for a performance the following weekend of a musical comedy routine that I wrote many years ago but never have performed because it requires a musician who knows the routine.

The big challenge is that I haven't been on stage since acting class in 1990 (and even then it was just for the small class, so never for a full theater audience), and I've never performed on-mic, other than the PC or my camera with their auto gain control.

It's also been a while since I've done my Elmer Fudd voice... or Scooby Doo... But I think I can manage.

You see, bandleader Julia wanted me to perform with the band (as thanks for providing and composing music for them to play) after hearing how well I can whistle. But then in the course of casual conversation, she heard me do a bit of We Will Rock You as Mickey Mouse (yes, casual conversation with me can be strange -- actually I was mentioning how I thought of making video of me doing that, but then Wayne Allwine passed away and I thought it might be bad taste since my Mickey is his Mickey), so she thought maybe I could sing Lulu's Back in Town as Mickey, which I did a bit of on the spot to show that I could.

A couple hours later, though, I suddenly remembered this musical comedy skit that I had in my head, and asked if they play Red Rose Rag. They didn't, she said, but they'll learn it. I've sent them the "script", and we'll see how it goes in rehearsal this weekend. Then next weekend's Sutter Creek Ragtime Festival will be the moment of truth. If it goes over well, we could do the skit again in November at the West Coast Ragtime Festival.

Hopefully I'll have somebody hold my camera and record it at Sutter Creek.

Lost in translation?

So the other day at the movies, we saw a trailer for the next Miyazaki animated feature, Ponyo.

I thought, "Huh. I hadn't heard of this one."

Then I went home and looked it up online. Oh, yes, I had heard of it. I had seen the original Japanese trailer, in fact.

But you might never know they were trailers for the same film.

The American trailer is basically ACTION ACTION OMG ACTION!!!! whereas the Japanese trailer presented a sense of wonder and adventure.

When did it become a crime in this country to promote movies based on their wonder & adventure content?

Super Sailor Obama saga continues

The third Sailor Moon playset installment of Tikistitch's hilarious posts featuring Barack Obama Presidential Action Figure is the funniest yet:
http://tikistitch.livejournal.com/1293595.html

It contains links to the first two installments within this playset, though she has had other such posts prior to using the Sailor Moon playset as the "Super Shining Crystal Oval Office of Wonder".

Further adventures of President Obama, Action Figure

I have neglected to keep up with Tikistitch's LiveJournal lately (and everyone else's actually). That's a pity 'cause I may have missed more gems like this latest installment in her ongoing series of photo essays documenting the life of President Barack Obama, Action Figure!

Oh my gosh! I'm playing my piano!

After all this time, you're probably wondering why I hadn't posted a video of me actually playing my piano myself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvpT1Tl4BYY

There's my answer. I guess.

The Great Mysteries of Life

There are many great mysteries of life.

One of them is: "Was that beetle in the washing machine before I put my clothes in it, or was it in my clothes to begin with?"

Another one is: "Was there more than one, and if so, will I find it/them when I remove my clothes from the dryer?"

There is much meditation on these questions happening in Tibet, I am sure.

Classic stuff

YouTube now has sponsored streaming of classic TV shows (and some rather recent).

For example, The Jack Benny Program, which features Mel Blanc as one of the regular cast.