"Canción del pirata"

I learned from my daughter (who has spent time in school in Spain) and also from colleaguesm, that Spanish schoolkids are required to memorize the poem "Canción del pirata" by José de Espronceda. I was treated to impromptu recitations, and told that a heavy metal band called Tierra Nueva had turned the poem into a song.



Of course, the mash-up with Pirates of the Caribbean was absolutely necessary.

Parody Thursday

via Bob Collins at MPR NewsQ, I learned of the existence of a multitude of parodies of the omnipresent, stupid, catchy-as-hell "California Gurls" song by Katy Perry (you can Google it). Of course, the most professional parody is by the gang at The Key of Awesome, but there will soon be one from every state (I've seen Iowa, Colorado, Wisconsin so far); the makers of the "Minnesota Gurls" parody have even made an interactive map on YouTube so you can find them!
Minnesota Gurls gets so many things right! How many times do you see the loon?

The boys want in on the action as well. Here are California Dorks:

Sing it, North Dakota Bois!

And finally, "California Gays" is the most fierce, fresh and fabulous!

It's gone international! Northern Irish girls get the deadpan award, Wolverhampton girls, haven't found a version in spanish yet, but I'm sure there is one out there, oh here.

Waiting for Glee....

Fellow Gleeks, can you believe we have to wait until April for the show to start again? Jimmy Fallon decided to put on his own version of Glee.

Sunday morning Lady Gaga earworm

Major earworm alert!
When I first saw Lady Gaga perform on SYTYCD, I thought she was creative, albeit a little sharp through the first half, a little awkward with the props, a little "who expected to see her out in daylight?" very underground club. But she sang live, unlike many of the musical guests on STYCYD and I liked her creativity.

Now she has perfected her live performances to the point where she is in complete control of her persona, the sets, lighting, costumes, dancing, and the catchy disco/dance-pop sound she's going for.

After seeing her perform "Bad Romance" and "Speechless" (piano's on fire! yaahhh!) "Ra Ra oo la la, ga ga oo la la!" has been STUCK IN MY HEAD all week long, during class, over Thanksgiving, and this morning. As she starts out on her North American tour for "Fame Monsters" with Mark Kanemura as one of her dancers (yay, Mark!), I need to hand off this earworm to someone else, so looky here and listen up!


Every time she has performed the song on TV in the last few weeks, the costumes and sets are a little different: on Gossip Girl, on the Ellen show, on Leno (clip taken down).

Of course, the Gaga parodies are popping up like mushrooms! We have our Saturday night lip-syncing in homemade costumes in your living room version (awesome!), the rewrite as Rad Bromance version. And Barely Political adds Lord Gaga to the mix:


Earlier songs given the remake treatment for laughs include the clever Pokeman parody "Pokéface" of "Poker Face"; "Just Dance" is transformed into "No Pants" in homage to Lady Gaga's costume preferences, and we go to the level of meta-parody with the fan-stalker song "Paparazzi" turned into a Lady Gaga-inspired hymn to Michael Buckley, YouTube star of "What the Buck?"

She does not have the musical or emotional range of my beloved Annie Lennox, who also played with disco-synth and gender-bending in her performance and videos for many years, but Lady Gaga has a healthy sense of humor, and is so much more interesting to watch than most of the other big pop stars right now, as she proved on the AMAs where she was far more interesting than J-Lo, Shakira, Alicia Keys, Rihanna, and even Adam Lambert, who, sadly, did not entertain me.

Here is the awesome DJ Earworm's mashup tribute to Annie Lennox, made with her collaboration:

Obama +Johnny Cash

"Doing Everything, Man" by Jeff Horwich at In the Loop

For lyrics and to download the mp3, go to MPR's In the Loop website here

How Twitter helps me filter and connect

I like this picture of the Ebro River rising in Zaragoza this winter, near the Basílica del Pilar.
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There is so much information to manage: what's the best way to do it? as usual, the answer is a question of individual needs and style. I found that Facebook overloaded me with information updates I didn't want, so I deleted my account, but other friends are delighted with how it helps them keep in touch with people.

For following blogs or news outlets, I have experimented with using RSS feeds in a number of ways: as part of the My Blogs Lists over on the right of this sight, on my iGoogle page, through Bloglines, on my browser toolbar. But I often feel as if I'm drowning in numbers if I look at a feed agregator; it triggers the somewhat obsessive-compulsive reader in me in a way that feels unpleasant.

I am finding that Twitter is working well for me as a kind of feed + filter, and so has enhanced my ability to pick up on stories that interest me. I'm following some really funny and generous people, who post tweets with links to stories, songs, images, or websites that entertain or teach me something new. I'm also trying to limit the number of tweeters I'm following so I'm not overdoing it. A tweet can be an end in itself, but also a door opening up on a blog post or a news story that leads me in unexpected and rewarding directions.

Here's a sampling of what I found today through tweets from people I'm following. I'm leaving out the personal greetings, jokes and academic musings, which deserve a separate post. I could have found some of these through an RSS feed to each of the relevant blogs, but the Twitter feed allows me to respond directly as well as leave comments on the news stories (which I do) or the posts.

via @VisitLakeStreet, a neighborhood news feed, I discovered the brand new "Living Green Twin Cities" website went live this week-looks great, and connects me to local events and writers about sustainability.

via @blogdiva and @nezalicious (aka Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen and Nezua at The Unapologetic Mexican) Nancy Pelosi decides to use her powers for good, as reported in the SF Chronicle: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined hundreds of families Saturday evening at a church in San Francisco's Mission District demanding an end to the immigration raids and deportations that separate parents from children across the United States." As usual, I'll be following the extended stories on immigration politics at Nezua's site The Unapologetic Mexican. boohoo, blogdiva's server is down, but I'll keep looking for her tweets.

via @kottkedotorg and @sashafrerejones, my favorite mashup of the week: kutiman has taken tracks from YouTube videos and created some Thru-You jukebox that is awesome, whether you watch it or just listen to it in the backround, as I'm doing now.

by way of @torresburiel in Zaragoza, I found a post on International Women's day, which is today, March 8, on a blog called marilink: "ninguna lista de chicas geek". Although he highlighted the part of her post that seemed to suggest that we don't need special days (she says she reads people for the quality of what they say, not because of gender), she also points out why we still need to think about women's place in the world and why we still need an International Women's Day. A link at her post (to an article posted at the Women's Media Center) pointed out that women are now half of all bloggers, but that the media still doesn't make this visible.

@UMN News links to a profile of a colleague in Anthropology whose book on the ethnography of Wall Street trades has just been published. I've heard her talk about her research, and I'm going to buy her book, because it's the inside scoop on the culture of the traders that has been a major contributing factor to this iteration of the boom/bust cycle. I have noticed that I get much more news about the U through my Twitter account than through other sources, and I work there. I went to the U's Media pages and discovered that they do not have a link or widget allowing readers to know they are using Twitter, so I wrote and suggested that they add that feature. Let's see if they respond.

@jojeda --Julio Ojeda-Zapata is a reporter for the Pioneer Press who covers all kinds of tech stuff at YourTechWeblog. He has a round-up of the PiPress coverage of Amazon's new ebook reader Kindle. I was interested in checking out this new device, an he does an excellent pro/con story. Then I started following his links to other bloggers and got pleasantly distracted. I love serendipity!

Update: edited for spelling because I'm sloppy.

More creative transformations

Before there was the mashup, there was the adaptation and the translation. Mashups are more than remixes of music and video tracks; they can be remixes of web applications as well. But the cover tune or the dubbed version of a TV show or movie are kinds of remixing as well.

Classical Spanish guitar quartet plays the theme song from The Simpsons.

A cappella group Canvas does their own version.

Oberlin Bassoon quartet plays the Super Mario music.

Spidercerdo (translation for Spain)

Puerco Araña (translation for Latin American audiences)

"ThruYou"

I was feeling really blue today until I saw this site (via Kottke)
ThruYou. There is a list of tracks: try them all. They are mashups of YouTube videos made with so much flair, so much imagination. They made me smile!

ice-skating

After long weeks of sub-zero weather, we have been thrilled to be able to walk around with our jackets unzipped now that the temps are above freezing. Of course it means that the thin layer of old snow has melted and the brown frozen mud is exposed. It will probably snow again this week, and we hope it will snow enough to end the fears of drought, but the birds I heard chirping this morning sounded as happy as I am that the sun is out and the air feels mild and gentle. A great day for skating-- Ana and Jose have posted some video clips about their adventures skating on Lake Superior up in Duluth.
Here's another video "Superior Skating" from the MNStories vlog. I love the sounds of skates on the ice.

And just because I found it, here's a mash-up of Zidane and gold-medal skater Plushenko.