Okay, so you guys have heard me talk about how sweet The Orange Box is, and it's mostly fallen on deaf ears, I get it. But there is one aspect to the Portal game that is so freaking sweet that it ranks up there with all the classic moments in gaming: the song at the end. Apparently some of the Portal developers were fans of this musician guy named Johathan Coulton and at one of his shows asked him to write a song for their game. Being a geek and a fan, Jonathan immediately agreed. What resulted is pure genius. Play the game to find out for yourself.
Anyway, I ended up googling the guy to find more of his shit, and it turns out he's super sweet. Not every song is gold, but he's got some really great ones. Think Nerd Rock kind of like They Might Be Giants but sometimes even geekier (in a good way).
You can listen to any of his shit for free at his website. To get a taste, I recommend listening to a couple of my favorites (so far), Code Monkey and I Feel Fantastic. He's got a bunch of novelty-type songs like The Presidents, which is a great way to learn a one-liner about every American President. Fatty will probably also enjoy his song about Ikea .
I ended up buying the guy's entire catalog - not sure yet if it was worth it, but I figure guys like him are few and far between and deserve some support.
I am somewhere arround test 15 or 16 so hopefully I'll be able to finish it up next time I can put any time into it. The game is full sweet. It makes use of physics as a means of solving puzzles. I'm sure the song will be cool too. I tend to like the zany stuff like that.
You pretty much got to the part of the game where it starts to get challenging, I'd say you probably have about 2/3 of the content left at this point, or at least half. I think I'm going to play through it again once I finish the other parts of the Orange Box.
I don't know Bert, the way you are going on about this guy one might think you've got the Coulton Crush. Should Pearl Jam be worried, jealous? :)
I've still been watching the Flight of the Conchord's videos. These are some of the very few videos I can rewatch over and over again and still crack up. They have been shown to quite a few people over here and they always get everyone laughing. I watched there rap... good lord, what more can I say...
BTW... I just moved my wireless over to my new apartment so now my connection went from Lowell Cable 1 Mpbs up to 54 Mpbs. Now I can give Coulton a real listen. His Rick Springfield cover intrigues me...
Yes, the Conchord's rap is one of their best, IMO. I love the "where did you get this preposterous hypothesis?" line.
But no, Pearl Jam has nothing to fear. This is just a gush of initial infatuation, whereas Pearl Jam has withstood the test of time. Apples and Oranges, anyway. I don't listen to Pearl Jam to laugh, and that's practically all you do when you listen to JoCo (as the fans call him) - even though the songs are very well done and are more than mere novelties.
Fatty, you really should listen to the Ikea song - freaking sweet.
The Code Monkeys song is the theme to a 8-bit cartoon on G4 of the same name. It's about video game designers in the 80's. It has some funny bits but overall can get a bit boring. They do make funny references to games like Contra and such though.
Yeah, I was all excited to watch that show too, based on the
commercials, but I watched one episode and never watched another. The
concept seemed interesting, but the 8-bit graphics seems to just be a
gimmick and nothing can stand in for good old fashioned writing.
So Jonathan Coulton had a show in Chicago last night and Heather and I were in attendance. Pretty small venue, actually it's a local bar - small enough that you can just barely make me out near the back of the stage in this photo that Coulton took on his PDA from stage:
The show was awesome, he played all tunes I wanted to hear. Great stuff. As you can see, he doesn't attract the most... attractive crowd, these are nerds first and foremost. But it was a lot of fun nonetheless. Actually, there is already video of the girl who was standing behind me getting asked onstage to perform her dance for Code Monkey onstage (which she has already done a video for on You Tube):
Also, his opening act (who would think a guy like this has an opening act?) was pretty funny too, they're a couple of dudes named Paul and Storm. They have some really funny short songs, my favorite of which is the Nun Fight, which is based on a true news story of some nuns breaking out in a fistfight. Also quite amusing is their impression of Bob Dylan at the bottom of a well . Just like Coulton, you can listen to their stuff for free online.
Anyway, for signing up on their mailing list, they selected one person to receive FABULOUS PRIZES, and they chose Heather's name! Pretty funny. Her FABULOUS PRIZES were: a copy of their CD, some Brown Sugar and Cinnamon Pop Tarts, and a Moon Pie. I had one bite of the Moon Pie this morning and nearly gagged. It's like chocolate-covered cardboard.
February 21, 2008 - Last night at a party thrown by Valve, makers of Portal, a megat0n
was dropped. The end credit song from Portal, "Still Alive," is going
to be made available as Rock Band DLC in the near future.
As Harmonix developer Sean Baptiste revealed in his blog,
the Rock Band version of "Still Alive" was debuted live on stage in
front of an enthusiastic crowd. Baptiste and Harmonix CEO Alex
Rigopulos joined "Still Alive" songwriter Jonathan Coulton for the
special occasion.
"Still Alive," featuring the voice of the demented AI GLaDOS, has no
official release date. Pricing for the content is also unknown. All we
do know is that "Still Alive" is definitely coming. We can't wait.
I think it would be full on sweet if they somehow allowed for indy bands to be able to convert their songs to rock band and upload it. Probably wouldn't be big nationally but locally would be huge.
Hey Ross, I got my presale info yesterday for Eddie Vedder at the Wiltern in Los Angeles in April. He is touring with Liam Finn.
I am not sure if he is heading your way or not...
If it makes you feel any better, I am not going. My daughter has a regional qualifier for dance nationals the weekend before in San Jose and we are going to be gone for 3 days.
My work travel schedule is crazy the next few months and it's going to take a toll on my little guys. It would be selfish to take off to Los Angeles for the night as much as I would like to.
