Jonathan Coulton

I am proud to announce that after much procrastination on my part, the JoCo Karaoke Store (JoCoKaSto?) is now open. Many thanks to Bob at LushKaraoke.com for creating all these files for me, and to Len for letting us use some of his images. And to you for taking these suckers out to the karaoke night at your local bar and dropping freakin’ “Womb with a View” on those mofos. Staht spreadin’ da nyeuuz…

Update: I’ve uploaded a sample to Blip.tv so you can see what these things look like.

Eric sends in this great JoCo infomercial. They’re all out of love; they’re so lost without me.

Viacom is suing YouTube/Google for a billion dollars over unauthorized use of its programming. This should be interesting, or at least expensive. I suppose this is why YouTube blindly took down everything Viacom told them to a couple of weeks ago, so that they could claim now to have respected rights of IP holders all along. Though there are a lot of other ways out of this for YouTube, including fair use arguments, and the “safe harbor” clause of the DMCA that protects some kinds of sites from liability for copyright infringement that their users do.

In a related story, that excellent slowed-down Baby Got Back video was taken down a while ago. As they say on the internet, I Am Not A Lawyer, but it sure seems pretty fair use-ish to me. Now, all I need is a billion dollars…

Another really fun show at Jammin Java this Sunday, even though I was a bit blotto on DayQuil (or maybe because of it). Someone brought a bunch of stuffed animals, mostly monkeys, and put up a sign suggesting that audience members pin money to a monkey and throw it onstage during Code Monkey. I found it surprising to say the least. And profitable. Kind of like a live version of gimme some candy. Whoever that mysterious benefactor was, I thank you. Now: what do I do with all these monkeys?
Still, nothing I or Paul and Storm did that night could possibly match this performance.

I spent some time with Ze Frank yesterday covering some of his songs for yesterday’s episode of The Show. I’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating: for the last almost year Ze has released a new video thingie every weekday and spawned a billion internet memes in the process. The Show is ending this month, and I think I can safely predict he will feel both relief and sadness when it’s over. He’s a smart and funny fellow and I salute him.