Canadian historian/author/... on how to roll a joint

from Joey aka AccordionGuy:

...asked if [I] would write some kind of elegy for Canadian journalist/historian/author/television personality Pierre Berton...let me say that one of the things I admired most about Pierre was his ability to challenge and confront other people in a genial, gentlemanly way.

If you want a good elegy for Mr. Berton, allow me to point you to Colby Cosh, who provides an interesting writeup; after all, he's a new-school conservative who's writing up an old-school liberal.

And for your enjoyment, I've enclosed a video that you'd never see a similar American figure take part in; it's of Pierre Berton explaining how to roll a joint.

link to Joey's posting of the clip: http://accordionguy.blogware.com/_attachments/194856/Pierre_Berton-How_to_Roll_a_Joint.mov

which is both educational and amusing. Not to mention an indirect commentary, in the context of this story, on what a less hysterical US federal government's FCC might aspire to. (As a result, I'm having "I'll Bet You They Won't Play This Song On The Radio" flashbacks.)

language, the brain, and monkeys

A very thought-provoking article from The Guardian, which reports on a study that suggests that monkey brains may not be as different from ours as had previously been supposed (think about that the next time you watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), with an unexpected foray into the nature-vs.-nurture question:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1358521,00.html

(Yes, pjack, monkeys. :> )

the CDC has interesting ideas on what kids like

http://www.cdc.gov/global/cards.htm

Since anyone can download them, they're not really "trading" cards as such, but nevertheless I have an image of a kid saying "Hey, I'll trade you three 'Ecoli O157:H7 Infection' for a 'Lyme Disease'".

my eviler twin sings a capella

My sister (red_frog) quoth:

I want you to play this for your lovely wife and tell me if this reminds her of what it would sound like if we kept you up for five days straight, fed you doughnuts, and then demanded that you cover the original. (Anyone reading this who knows what his singing voice sounds like is welcome to weigh in as well. Me, I'm thinking it's not a perfect match, but he leapt immediately to mind when I heard it.)

The year before last, I sang with the UC Irvine men's group called Men In Blaque. (I'm not responsible for the spelling of the name; apparently they were worried about trademark infringements and no one told them that the phrase seriously predated the movie. Me, I would have gone with Menne In Blak.) They perform music that, as I put it, runs the gamut from the sublime (Gregorian chants and all that) to the ridiculous (you guessed it). It's actually a very highly skilled and talented group of folks (generally speaking) but the director drives me nuts (much like the steering wheel in my pants), which is one reason I'm not still singing with them. On the plus side, I did get to tour Mexico (Puebla) with them and find out that my Spanish is marginally better when I'm drunk. But I digress...

The director selected me, without bothering to audition anyone, as the soloist for this piece. In this case, that meant that I did the spoken parts (as well as singing the baritone part with the ensemble), and the choreography was centered around me. (It also, for some of our concerts, involved members of the choir creeping around the audience and temporarily kidnapping small children. I am not making this up.) The musical arrangement was fairly conventional (not jazzed up as this one is) but, alas, truncated: it's missing at least one verse, possibly two.

I asked the director later and he told me that in addition to the good fit for the voice, he thought I resembled Jim Carrey. (He assured me that he meant this in a good way.) I conclude that he was basing this mostly on the dark hair, the propensity for wisecracks, the height, and the rubber face (I'm convinced, given their heritage, that my offspring are going to have Eyes As Large As Saucers and the ability to rotate their faces completely around their skulls), rather than on any actual similarity of facial features. I must admit that I enjoyed displaying what I thought was the appropriate expression for having just eaten a sandwich involving arsenic sauce.

I actually thought the rendition above was pretty funny. However, I don't think that I can reliably sing quite as low as that even when I've been up for 5 days (which doesn't necessarily help anyway). Some post-processing might help.

Updates: I'm now hosting that song myself (*paints target on chest labeled 'RIAA: SHOOT ME'*), so it should be (a) less ephemeral and (b) more easily reachable. I've also listened to the song a couple more times, and I suspect that there is actually some processing going on there--not that I haven't met a few people that could sing that low.