Project Rooftop

Album of the Month:
Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount: Is There Room For Me?
*Contented sigh* The 2nd album from the Seattle superstars is every bit the masterpiece that their first one was. Another album funded through a grassroots Kickstarter campaign that exceeded what it asked for, this album is destined to be my album of the year. Just like their last album.

Game of the Month:
The Humble Indie Bundle
Not just one game, the Humble Indie Bundle is a periodic release of a handful of the best video games from independent game makers. You can get some games that are really unique, and best of all it’s name your price for the whole set! Pay what you think they’re worth or what you can afford. This is a great way to get exposed to some games you wouldn’t otherwise ever know about.

Tee Fury

Album of the Month:
Blue Scholars: Cinemetropolis
A damnably catchy album with an equally wonderful origin story: The local Seattleite duo of MC Geologic and DJ Sabzi funded the entire album through their fans via a Kickstarter campaign that ended up bringing in more than double the money they asked for! Geo has one of my favorite flows in all of hip-hop right now, and his lyrics are intelligent and clever. Sabzi pulls out some head-shakingly-good music for this project. Here, watch this video for “Fou Lee” (which is an Asian market on Beacon Hill in Seattle):

Game of the Month:
A Boy and His Blob
This is a gorgeous, soothing, adorable game. It’s a re-imagining of the insanely frustrating ’80s video game. In remaking it they removed all of the things that made the first game so difficult to actually play. The result is a strangely pastoral experience, like walking through a beautiful forest… with puzzle-solving. My favorite part: there’s a button whose sole purpose is to make the boy hug the blob. It’s so frikkin’ cute, and it serves no purpose other than to be cute.

So what happens when you take some really funny tweets, then find some appropriate panels from old Peanuts comic strips, and then replace the dialogue in the panels with the funny tweets?

From a tweet by @Karimi

COMEDY GOLD, THAT’S WHAT.

Also, one of my new favorite websites, Peanutweeter!

Warning, much of it (like much of Twitter) is NSFW.

Popped Culture

Album of the Month:
Open Mike Eagle: Rappers Will Die of Natural Causes
Just like I did last year, I’ve named Mike Eagle’s new album as my Album of the Month BEFORE it is released! Don’t worry, you won’t have to wait long; it’s released on Tuesday 6/7. Here’s a video to tide you over:

It’s gunna be suh-weeet.

UPDATE: Here it be!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/rappers-will-die-natural-causes/id442636707

DVD of the Month:
The Middleman: The Complete Series
The Middleman was a small show that kinda slipped under everyone’s radar a few years ago. It quietly aired a dozen episodes on ABC Family, then disappeared. It’s a shame; it’s one of the geekiest, most gosh-darn fun shows I’ve seen in a good long while. It’s a TV show for people who love TV shows, Movies, and Comic Books. It was canceled before they got to make the final episode, so after you watch the series you should pick up the comic book they made of the finalé.

First off, it was this post about a popsicle maker that lets you put cute faces on your popsicles!

TOO CUTE! AAAIGH! KAWAII!

The device is called the Zoku Duo Quick Pop Maker. SOMEONE BUY IT FOR ME RIGHT AWAY!

Then on Thursday it was this post about an etsy artist who makes felt food.

  

Too cute. Too, too cute.

Via Host-It Notes.

Not only has his Three Ninjas music been featured as my Album of the Month.

Not only was Three Ninjas my Musician of the Year for 2010.

Not only has he been on an episode of a very popular television show, featured in the Stranger (twice) and Seattle Weekly, interviewed on the radio and in the New York Times, for which he had an actual photo shoot that resulted in this bit of handsomeness:

Jason J. Brunet in the New York Times

Not only that, but last week The Today Show flew him out to new york just so that Al Roker could have the honor of talking with him for a few minutes:

And perhaps the icing on the cake? Mr. Jason J. Brunet now has a Wikipedia page about him. AND HE DIDN’T EVEN MAKE IT HIMSELF!

Oh, also his fans have a habit of taking photos of themselves with Jason’s Three Ninjas stickers covering their private parts (link is very NSFW).

Fame it up, Famestopher!

Link of the Month:
Dads are the Original Hipsters
Sorry hipsters, your dad was the original hipster and he was killing it back in the day. This site has photographic proof that no matter how cool you think you are, your kids will think you are an absolute dork. And they’ll be right.

Album of the Month:
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour: Fruit
This is an incredibly infectious and poppy album that has sweet hints of 60s spy jazz music liberally sprinkled thoughout its happy, bouncy, electro-pop sensibilities. Danish vocalist Mette Lindberg has a thin, girlish voice that I find incredibly appealing in such stand-out tracks as “Around the Bend” (which was featured in an iPhone commercial), “Golden Age,” and “Bad Fever.” Also they seem to have a song about Ghost Rider. Awesome fun.

Book of the Month:
Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition by Stan Sakai
It is a great shame of mine that I do not own any Usagi Yojimbo comics. You may remember him from some (strange) crossovers with TMNT, but Usagi has a life completely on his own, and is celebrating his 25th anniversary. Usagi Yojimbo is easily in the top five greatest comic book series of all time, and I would love to own every single issue. I’ll begin my collection with this extremely handsome edition that collects the first seven volumes of the series (from Fantagraphics) with many fantastic extras. Hopefully I will be able to continually add volumes to my collection.

On Tuesday the 19th I got a new job.

Carrie is now an assistant purchaser for LUWA Distributing. And in a massively fantastic turn of events, my new job is across the street from her now job; I will be (when I actually start in May) an e-commerce merchandiser for Quality Sewing & Vacuum.

Carrie & I will get to carpool to and from work every day! And maybe meet up for lunches once in a while.

It’s a brand-new day, but a much better one than Spider-Man had a couple years ago. I Hear A New World calling…

First off was Busdriver. I’ve talked about him before on my website, and seen him several times at Neumos. I went with Three Ninjas, Tangentbot, and HeartFeltRobots. Before the show Three Ninjas chatted a bit with Busdriver on account of having done a remix of an Open Mike Eagle & Busdriver song. My pal HeartFeltRobots even made Busdriver his very own felt Busdriver Bot!

Busdriver started his set with a very cool visual effect: all the lights were off, but he had a blacklight that also emitted lasers in such a way that they made a starfield on the background. Then he stood in front of the blacklight and starfield wearing all white. He made Tangentbot very happy by rapping over an Aphex Twin song for his encore.

Two of the opening acts were women hip-hop artists, Night Fox and Katie Kate. They were both very good, though I kinda liked Night Fox’s energy a little more. They were unlike many women hip-hop artists that I’m used to, in that they weren’t full of “even tougher than a man” bravado (even though there was a fair share of cussing). Night Fox’s voice periodically had an almost-Billie-Holliday warble in it, and at times sounded like an American Miho Hatori. Plus she was tiny and kinda adorable. Katie Kate was a much more polished performer and technical musician — I learned later that she’s a classically-trained pianist and graduated from Cornish with a music degree! Anyway, the point is they had a really fascinating style of hip-hop. I almost want to call it “Cutesy Hip-Hop” but that sound a little degrading. The point is, it was fun and inviting instead of angry and aggressive.

You can watch a Katie Kate music video here!

As for the Chop Suey show the next week, Threeni & T-Bo (as they will now be referred to in the rest of this post because it sounds awful) were the opening act for the Fake Four tour, which is the same tour that Open Mike Eagle opened for last year. Good company! And Carrie actually got to come with me because for once she didn’t have to teach on a night where there was an awesome music show!

They completely killed their set. The highlight of the whole night was when Threeni and T-Bo performed an absolutely epic cover of Jewel’s “Foolish Games.” For realsz! Ch-ch-check it out!

Like what you heard there? About to commit seppuku because you missed it? Stay your blade, I say! For Three Ninjas & Tangentbot will be performing a Mardi Gras party at the Skylark Café on Tuesday the 8th! THAT’S TOMORROW, HOMESLICE!

Carrie & I didn’t stay for the whole show because:

1. We live in Tacoma
2. I had to be at work at 8:00 the next morning
3. We’re old

But another excellent act that we got to see was Abadawn, a rapper with an extremely young countenance (he looked like he was 15) and a fascinating style. He had two vocalizations: a hip-hop voice that had inflections and flow that reminded me somewhat of Eminem, and a full-on death-metal screech/growl voice. He switched freely between them. Also, his songs were short, which I really appreciated (a couple were only like 45 seconds long, I swear). They were like a little nugget burst of energy, like a hip-hop haiku of rage.

So: February = good month for hip-hop shows.

Lackadaisy

Album of the Month:
JP Inc.: An Album of Distinction
You might know JP by his former musician name of Pleaseeasaur. In his new identity, JP has crafted a concept album: JP Incorporated is a company that crafts “Music Themes for Quality Television Programs.” The album is a parade of howlingly-funny horrible theme songs for horrible-sounding TV shows, such as “Lietenant Custard & His Banger of Time,” “Family Comedy,” “Gymnastics Dad,” and “The Internet” (and those are all just on the first half of the album), interspersed with some commercial work, such as the recurring “Common Scents” and the heavy-metal band Crap Factory. The songs are all purposefully incompetent and sometimes hilariously and aggravatingly accurate, especially to 1980s TV theme songs. Take a listen to some sample tracks here:
The Internet:
Situations:
Jacuzzi Air:
And here’s the video for “Jazzbot Xtreme”

Game of the Month:
Kirby’s Epic Yarn
One of the most visually stunning Wii games I’ve ever played, Epic Yarn re-tools the familiar Kirby franchise and spins a new game where everything is composed entirely of yarn and fabric and buttons. But it isn’t just a visual style; the side-scrolling platformer gameplay is based almost entirely on incredibly creative ways to manipulate and interact with the various fabric environments and yarn characters. Kirby’s Epic Yarn is simply a joy to play, and is a surprisingly relaxing and happy experience. It’s low on the challenge level (much like Lego Star Wars, you can’t actually die), but the whole point is to be able to experience the lush fullness of the game, not get frustrated by its challenges. So much fun!