The other day, Andie rather luckily spotted that Jonathan Coulton was performing a show in Bristol today. We hadn’t “been out” for a little while, so we decided on a whim to grab some tickets and head along to the performance.
I’m extremely glad we did. It was a wonderful experience. I’ve only ever seen videos of JoCo’s shows before, but being there live was even better — particularly as he was also accompanied by his usual companions Paul & Storm, who also acted as the “warm-up” act.
Paul & Storm are the perfect warm-up act. Blending some light-hearted stage comedy with some genuinely amusing songs, they have a wonderful sense of chemistry with one another and with the audience. They can adapt to the mood of the room at a moment’s notice and engage with hecklers faster than any dedicated stand-up I’ve ever seen. Plus their songs are just plain good — and The Captain’s Wife’s Lament always brings a smile to everyone’s face, however long it ends up going on for.
Jonathan Coulton, meanwhile, is a little more understated than the antics of his friends. His songs are often amusing, but in a way that ensures you have to actively listen to the lyrics in order to “get” them. Some of them assume knowledge of certain mathematical and scientific concepts — he does a love song as sung by Pluto’s moon to Pluto, for example, as well as one about the Mandelbrot Set — but he also does a great job of explaining to the audience what his songs are about.
He describes his music as being ’70s-style soft rock, and beautifully encapsulated this in a self-parodying song in which “soft rock” was used as a not-terribly-subtle euphemism. This piece also included a variety of spectacular, seamless and possibly improvised homages to various popular songs
More than being amusing, though, his songs are clever and often quite touching. Even when he’s singing about scientists destroying the world with robot armies, you know that he’s channelling concepts that the audience can relate to — loneliness, alienation, a sense of not fitting in with “normal” society — and that’s what makes him such a beloved performer among the “nerd” community.
While sitting in that venue this evening, listening to the songs and laughing at the silly jokes, I got a very similar feeling to what I felt when I went to PAX a couple of years ago. A sense of “this is for me. This is something I am a part of, and I like being a part of it.” It’s not a feeling I have particularly often, so I relish it when it shows itself. And that, really, is all I could have asked from this show — I’m happy it delivered.
It’s 3:30am now. I should probably get some sleep. (I’m up so late because I was attempting to finish the latest visual novel I’m playing, Deus Machina Demonbane, but it’s just going on and on and on. It’s good though. Watch out for a writeup on Games Are Evil tomorrow.)
I’m a big fan of both Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day. The pair of them, along with people like Jonathan Coulton, Paul & Storm, Gabe and Tycho and numerous others, have done a great deal to make being a geek “cool”. And not in a particularly obvious “hey, we’re going to make geekdom cool!” way — simply by being themselves and exhibiting an admirable amount of passion in their interests, they’ve brought numerous geeky pursuits to the attention of a wide variety of people who may not have investigated things like board games, web shows and other eccentricities before.
Today, Wheaton, Day and several others took a big new step in their campaign to provide bored geeks with ways to waste their time. The launch of Geek and Sundry had been teased — particularly by Day — for some time, and Sunday saw a 12-hour Google+ hangout “subscription drive” show to promote the new site, featuring a variety of events and very cool-sounding interviews. As I live in the silly UK time zone, I was fast asleep for most of these, but the good bits are likely on YouTube somewhere.
Anyway, what is Geek and Sundry? It’s a YouTube channel. Nothing overly fancy there, but unlike a lot of YouTube channels, Wheaton, Day and their team have made a big effort to organise their work and provide regular programming. And between them, there’s a wide variety of different shows that will cater to most (geeky) tastes. I spent a bit of time checking out a couple of the shows today, and I can see myself regularly checking in on them. They’re good quality, interesting and presented by charismatic, likeable people. Doubtless not everything will be to everyone’s taste — I know for a fact I have a number of friends who find Day’s ditzy “Elliot Reed”-style personality quite irritating, for example, so they may wish to avoid her content — but there’s a broad mix of things that should, between them, appeal to most people.
So what’s on offer? Well, I could spend some time describing each show in detail but they’ve been good enough to provide trailers for each bit, so let’s just explore those, shall we?
The Guild
Many of you will be familiar with The Guild by now, as it’s been running since 2007 and has appeared on YouTube, the Xbox Live Marketplace, Zune Marketplace, MSN Video, iTunes, Netflix, Hulu and DVD. For those of you who aren’t, it’s a comedy series about the lives of a group of online gamers who all play a massively-multiplayer online RPG together. Exactly what game they play is never revealed, with them referring to it only as “The Game”, but the focus is more on the quirky “real people” who make up the titular Guild rather than their online personae.
Day stars as Cyd “Codex” Sherman, who has to attempt to do her best when a guildmate — previously only known online — shows up on her doorstep. Hilarity, as you may expect, ensues.
Geek and Sundry will be showing the fifth season of the successful show.
The Flog
Fans of Felicia Day, this is where to go. The Flog is a weekly “vlog” show in which Felicia Day babbles nonsense for a few minutes and then goes off to do something interesting. The first episode sees her going to visit a blacksmith so she can better appreciate her Skyrim character’s level 100 blacksmithing skill. She gets very excited about hammers, which is kind of adorable.
Tabletop
This has been the highlight of what I’ve watched so far. Wil Wheaton hosts a half-hour show devoted to a specific tabletop game. Throughout the course of each episode, he and his companions explain the rules of the game under scrutiny and play through it. (You don’t see the whole game — just “edited highlights”. Probably for the best, given the lengthy playtime of many board games.)
The format looks to be a great way to find out more about various tabletop games, and the banter between Wheaton and his guests is entertaining. The first episode demonstrates Small World, which is a game I’ve been interested in for a while.
Sword and Laser
Those who enjoy those strange tablet devices with paper pages will want to check out Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt’s show Sword and Laser. Based on the duo’s podcast, the show focuses on sci-fi and fantasy and features interviews with authors, reviews of new releases and discussion of recent news in these genres.
Written By a Kid
This has the potential to be a lot of fun: original sci-fi, fantasy and horror stories by kids aged between 4 and 9 are turned into live-action and animated shorts by a variety of directors including Dane Boedigheimer (Annoying Orange), Rhett & Link (IFC’s Commercial Kings) and Daniel Strange (Between Two Ferns with Zach Galfianakis).
LearningTown
Fans of “nerdcore” music will be right at home with this one, as dynamic musical duo Paul & Storm “blend vocal harmonies with comedic scenarios as they are tasked with reviving the flagging educational show of their childhoods”.
If you’ve ever witnessed the majesty of Paul & Storm performing “Frogger: The Musical”, then you’ll likely know what to expect from this one.
Dark Horse Motion Comics
Finally, comic book fans will want to check in on the Dark Horse Motion Comics show, where a number of Dark Horse Comics properties including Hellboy, The Goon, The Umbrella Academy and others will be brought to live with motion graphics. The first episode is already up, based on “The Secret” by Mike Richardson, with art by Jason Shawn Alexander. (I know nothing about comics. I include these names for the benefit of people who do!)
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I’ve subscribed already, as several of these shows sound like they’re going to be great. The first episodes of some are now available, with others to follow in the next couple of weeks.
