Abnormal Hank

I was thinking about how to make money selling recorded music in these crazy, digital, everyone's-an-artist-and-no-one's-a -patron times, and I think I stumbled onto an ingenious plan. Ask yourself, what's the one genre of music that people will continue to buy, no matter how glutted the popular market becomes nor how freely downloadable current recording formats may be? That's right — parody songs! As long as there's room in people's brains for crappy music they wish they didn't know note for note, there's room for parodies thereof. Weird Al Yankovic has held a nice little corner on this highly lucrative market for a few decades, and it's time someone else got a slice of the comedic pie. And what better way to grab people's attention than to parody Weird Al himself? I mean, if parody songs like "Another One Rides the Bus" and "Like a Surgeon" are super popular, then parodies of those parodies can only be mega-super-duper-popular!

I've already started working on the concept and the material. I'll call myself "Abnormal Hank Henkeltrocken" and release a video on YouTube for my first song, "She's Got a Pickle on Rye (and She Won't Share)". I'll dress like a Beatle, only zany, and make lots of crazy faces while I sing lyrics about all the kinds of food in a deli. It'll be hilarious, and I'm pretty sure I'll even be able to convince Weird Al to make a cameo in the video. It'll become an overnight sensation, in the modern, viral way these things do, and I'll be offered a record deal of extrayankovian proportions. I figure I can put it all together pretty professionally for a cool fifty thousand, which should be no problem to talk the bank into loaning me on Monday morning. Alison's gonna be so psyched when I surprise her with the finished product.

- Hank

Seen It!

Two yellow thumbs up!

Cynical, Antisocial Satire and Unabashedly Sweet, Anachronistic Croonin' — I'll Take It All!

Is anyone else looking forward to the Simpsons movie as much as I am? Of course, I'm sure millions of people are. What a stupid question. I guess it's a new bit of excitement for me. I hadn't really thought much about it at all, but recently I've been reading and re-appreciating a bunch of old Life In Hell strips. I remember my kneejerk contrarian friend Buffy always said when Groening's TV vehicle was still a new thing that she preferred the comic strip, and I accused her of being a kneejerk contrarian, which, as I mentioned, she is. However, I'm reminded now that there was something pretty great and inimitable about that strip. So many jokes in such a small space!


Anyway, I'm sure the movie will be provocatively compelling, with enough additional layers lurking in the mises-en-scène to warrant repeated viewing.

The other thing I'm really into lately is Burl Ives. I bought a 1973 compilation record at a church yard sale in Yarmouth, and am totally digging it. There go whatever hipster credentials I may once have believed myself to possess, though, in my defense, I hear Frank Black is a big fan.

- Andrew

A Tale of Two Cities

I know, I know, I haven't blogged for a long time, and there's probably lots of stuff I should be telling you, but I've taken so long in choosing and fixing up these vacation pictures that I have to dump them on here and hit the sack. All you really need to know for now is that we were in Maine for a week at a cottage with my family and got to visit with my grandparents in Montreal on the way back. As you can probably tell from the photos, everyone had a really great time.













The other bit of news is that the day before we arrived home, someone was murdered in broad daylight on the corner two doors down from our house. At four o'clock in the afternoon, a man was shot by one of the two people with whom he was walking, and they quickly fled the scene. I guess the whole place was covered in police tape and crawling with investigators all night long, and was only cleaned up half an hour before we got back. There are still yellow circles all over the sidewalk where the police marked any little thing that could possibly be a piece of evidence. It was quite shocking, as this block is very yuppie/family-oriented, though I suppose things do get pretty sketchy pretty fast in either direction. The whole neighbourhood is palpably upset.

Buster, meanwhile, is doing fine and very happy that we're home. Thanks, Sherry, for taking care of the little scaredy-cat.

- Andrew