TGIF: Noah Ritter “Songified”

Thank God it's Friday, and here it is, your moment of whimsy.

Noah Ritter of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, stole the show on WNEP-TV News one evening, during an interview with reporter Sofia Ojeda at the Wayne County Fair.

Naturally, this gave The Gregory Brothers an idea. And so Even and Andrew teamed up to cover what would become the kid's smash hit, “Apparently.” This second clip facilitates the process that is called "songifying."

And that's how the job gets done, as only “The Gregsters” can do it. The result is for a kid who had never been on live television, to perform the greatest song ever, about not having ever been on live television. There's your fifteen minutes, kid.

And so it goes.
 

Art-For-Art’s-Sake Theatre: Schmoyoho “Herp de Derp”

Time once again for our usual midday Wednesday feature.

Schmoyoho is a collaboration of our pals The Gregory Brothers, with a little help from several of their equally-madcap friends, especially Bean and Stephon, who star in this music video as a commentary on being socially acceptable -- or not. “This channel is where we songify our world, because everything is better as a song!” And so it goes.
 

This Is Ponderous

You've all been wanting to ask, I just know it:

“Yo, Mister Black-Hatted One, how come you haven't added to the cacophony of commentary of Catholic stuff lately; you know, heretics running loose, Pope Francis saying something he regrets by the end of the day, the next pretty face on the celebrity convert circuit -- we've been tired of having to choose between Mark Shea's massive cult following and Michael Voris' massive head of hair. What gives?”

Well, you asked for it, and I'm gonna tell ya.

It happens every year, the two events which, one on top of the other, account for April and May being the busiest time of the year for me. There has been little opportunity to write, until the holiday weekend which had just passed.

Holy Week

There is, of course, the week or so preceding Easter, which is by far and away the busiest time of year at any Catholic parish. When I began at St John the Beloved nearly seven years ago, I was Master of Ceremonies for all parish-wide events pertaining to Holy Week. Since then, as the parish's celebration of the Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil) uses the "Novus Ordo Missae" in Latin and English, rather than the traditional form, the role of MC has been handed over to the older gentlemen in the server corps. My official title for those days (as if I really needed one) is now "Privy Chaplain to the Pastor Emeritus," which means I sit "in choir" with him and the other ordained guys, and fetch the good Father something if he needs it. I suspect it's more of an honorarium than anything else.

Washington Folk Festival

The other event takes place on the weekend following Memorial Day. I've been involved with the Festival since 1992, when I lived in Georgetown, and ran into a former partner from the Contra Dancing days. She told me they needed a designer and editor for their program guide. I've been at it ever since, and the first three weekends in May are pretty much taken up compiling the material and putting it altogether. The staff people are really a great bunch, and it amounts to what is probably the most angst-free volunteer endeavor I have done in my life, with very little in the way of politics and palace intrigue. In return, they get a product about whose delivery they never have to worry. Granted, it is one of the less important aspects of the Festival production -- unless it isn't there.

Some years I work the Festival. Some years I don't go at all. My son Paul used to do stage work, and was running a sound board by the time he was twelve. I've never actually performed for it, though, not even as a sideman. Washington isn't like Cincinnati, where I would have been in a working band a long time ago. I can't really explain it.

Well, anyway, Holy Week and the Festival are the two annual "big ticket" items. This year, there is more …

Housekeeping

My house needs attention this year. My townhouse neighborhood has a number of laundry rooms throughout the complex, but more and more people are putting in their own units. I had mine put in last year, but there is more to be done. Sal acquired some antique furniture when one of her home health care patients couldn't take it with them, so it has found a place here. She keeps things in the drawers for the off-season, to facilitate sharing a small apartment with her BFF, so she gets storage at room temperature, and I get a place that looks … well, more domesticated than I am (plus it breaks up the monotony of bookshelves). The acquisition also included a china cabinet, so now I can finally display my mother's Depression glass collection. In addition, I am building my new combination stereo cabinet and fireplace, over which will be mounted my (very first) big-@$$ flat screen television. I'm probably the last one in my family (or for that matter, my neighborhood) to use an old-style cathode-ray tube set. And so an era of technology draws to a close. But first …

I need to repaint the interior. Being a designer, I have to approach this using a disciplined method (which drives Sal crazy, and that's part of the fun), in the form of The Home Color Selector by David Willis. I was supposed to schedule the painters this week, but was delayed by one thing or another, so it will have to take place some time during the summer. I'm also thinking about what to do with the kitchen, which has not had anything done since these units were last renovated en masse in 1982 (which is how old my dishwasher is). I'm getting estimates anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000, depending on how much of a production I want to make of this.

Capping that all off, of course, is the need to refinance. I bought the house in September of 2005, about a year before the housing bubble burst. And even though my neighborhood is next to the most up-and-coming neighborhood in northern Virginia, my real estate assessment is only now beginning to rise, after years of steadily going down. That matters when it comes to how much you pay in real estate taxes, but as to refinancing, no matter what your credit rating or income (and I'm good on both counts), it all comes down to this: no financial institution will touch a mortgage with a balance higher than 95 percent of what the home is presently worth.

Things could be worse. I could be out in Fairfax or Loudoun County, living in a big-@$$ McMansion that really took a serious bath when the bottom fell out. But still, if I'm going to have more than a modest retirement, something's gotta happen in the next six to twelve months. But you know, I'm still in this ball game, and it ain't over until it's over.

Nine to Five

And, of course, there is still the day job. After more than thirty years as a graphic designer (a "visual information specialist" in government parlance), I have been a photographer and video producer for the last three or four years, and a year ago next month, was reclassified as an "audiovisual production specialist." My director asked me to complete a self-assessment for my midyear review. I put on it: “I am the least of your worries.” I didn't get an argument, not from him, and not from the deputy communications director, to whom he reports. I find myself becoming increasingly relied upon for certain events, and unlike my previous position, I deal directly with top officials, without being hovered over by a bunch of empty-suited nervous Nellies, as I often was in the past. So, even though I haven't gotten a promotion in a gazillion years, my influence is being felt, and I'm working with the grownups again. I haven't had the chance for this much access since the early Reagan years.

And so, even though I'm no closer to being a mega-pundit of Catholic new media than I was a year ago, it's only because there are not enough hours in the day to do what needs to be done. So if you're looking to keep up on all the bitching and moaning going on, keep watching for our regular Thursday feature, because that's where we give you the highlights and the low blows.

And speaking of time, I turn sixty years old this year, which is another subject for another day. “I think you see what I mean.”
 

FAMW: Where There’s A Will, There’s Colbert

By now we know that Comedy Central's own pretend pundit and devout Catholic Stephen Colbert will be the next host of The Tonight Show on NBC. But until then, he holds court at The Colbert Report, where he recently interviewed syndicated columnist George Will, who explains, much to the amazement of Colbert, and in spite of themselves, how the Chicago Cubs helped to win the Cold War. See this stunning display of logic, and much more, for this week's Friday Afternoon Moment of Whimsy.
 

FAMW: A Conference Call in Real Life

If you haven't seen this go viral already (and you both know who you are), this is what the 21st century corporate office environment is like.

Recent years have seen the rise of "hotelling" or the sharing of desk space by alternating "teleworkers" -- Dick works at home on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, while Jane works at home on her company laptop, and comes in on Tuesdays and Thursdays so Dick can stay at home and ... walk the dog and pretend he's working. It all sounds great, until you try to get them all together for a meeting. It's funny, yes, until you have to work this way, and find how easy it is for at least one joker to be perpetually disengaged from his virtual office environment.

It happens to yours truly on a weekly basis. Tripp and Tyler demonstrate what a regular in-the-office meeting would look like if it went like a conference call. It's hilarious, unless this is what your job is like, in which case it's REALLY hilarious. And so it goes for this week's Friday Afternoon Moment of Whimsy.

And while we're at it, welcome to my day job. Watch your American tax dollars at work.
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FAMW: Talkin’ Hashtags

Once upon a time, it was the least pressed button on the dial pad of a telephone, and was rarely used even in the written word. Now it has become the staple of every single social network, and every form of text communication. Will it eventually take over the English language? #saywhat

Not if Jimmy Fallon of NBC's The Tonight Show can help it.

Fallon illustrates just how ridiculous we would sound if we had a Twitter (or Facebook, or Instagram) conversation in real life, with the assistance of Jonah Hill in making the point (or the repeated hashtags). This is followed by a voice from the Millennials' past, reminding them of the true manly virtues for intelligent discourse. It's come to this, people, if only for this week's Friday Afternoon Moment of Whimsy.

#tgif
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FAMW: Anna Kendrick: Behind the Scenes of the Mega Huge Game Day Ad Newcastle Almost Made

The time has come upon us for the Super Bowl, which means that we here at man with black hat review the totally awesome big-@$$ budget commercials. We start with the story behind the scenes of what might have been. After all, Anna Kendrick has been a big favorite of late here at Chez Alexandre, after viewing her at work several dozen times already, in the 2012 collegiate a capella comedy-drama Pitch Perfect.

We have plans to devote the next month to some aspects of both the movie (not all of which are completely decadent by the standards of our target audience), and her musical work, but until then, and until we run down our favorite picks among the Super Bowl ads, here's a conceptual rough cut of the ad for Newcastle beer that got away, but for this week's Friday Afternoon Moment of Whimsy.

(NOTICE: Content advisory, kinda sorta. Whatever.)
 

FAMW: Live Free and High!

By now, a number of the several States have defied the potential challenge from federal courts to legalize marijuana, whether for medicinal use, or for, uh, "medicinal" use. In fact, this writer wanted to procure a stash for his parents for their fiftieth anniversary back in 2002, given Dad's final stages of MS, and Mom's arthritis. The proposal alone was, shall we say, therapeutic.

In the face of New Hampshire's own attempt to give the go to the grass being (potentially?) blocked in federal appeals court, Steven Crowder paid a visit to the Granite State (where the motto is “Live Free or Die”) to find out what people on the street thought of the idea. The results couldn't be better for this week's Friday Afternoon Moment of Whimsy.

(H/T to Ed Morrissey.)
 

Art-For-Art’s-Sake Theatre: Ylvis “The Fox (What Does The Fox Say?)”

TIme once again for our usual midday Wednesday feature.

If you thought last week's installment was over the edge, you haven't seen what was uncovered in the course of finding it, no less than this little gem. Ylvis is a comedy duo from Bergen, Norway, consisting of two brothers named Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker. (So, "Ylvis" is an abbreviation of their surname, not the Norwegian spelling of "Elvis" after all. Imagine the relief.)

Most Americans got their first glimpse of them on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon just two weeks ago. From their professional debut in 2000, they now have a successful talk show on NorgeTV, already in its third season.

This video already has 180 million views. It's not hard to see why, don't you think?

Or don't you?