Category Archives: Uncategorized

Yeah, the universe is infinite and all that, and multiple realities where everyone one can think, say or do has already been thought, said or done, an infinite number of times.

Still, can you come up with a question that’s likely never been asked before, using words that actually exist, and that more or less makes sense, gramatically?

I’ve been sitting here thinking, and I’m drawing a blank.

How about:

Where were you in the year 2078, at 17 seconds past the time that the lynx ate the Hoover Dam employee?

Prove me wrong.  Or come up with your own.

Because it’s one of my wife’s favourite songs.  That is, one of the songs my wife enjoys the most, not the favourite song of one of my wives.  ‘Cause, I only have one wife, and if I had more than one, I would have written ‘one of my wives’ favourite songs’.

Check out the link to the right.  You can buy our Chimp album at CDBaby!  Just $12.00 to have it shipped right to your home.  Or you can buy it in mp3 format for just $9.99.

Make Santa’s job easy.  Pick up Chimp: Thundercrack!

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.

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!

This may be the saddest garfield minus garfield strip ever:

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…

Did you know that today is Transgender Remembrance Day?

Me neither.

Lest We Forget.

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.

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.