Jonathan Coulton

You may have heard about my new greatest hits CD “JoCo Looks Back.” 20 of your favorites! Technically it’s 20 songs chosen via a complicated algorithm involving popularity, best guess, and my own selfish desires and whims. But who’s counting! If you’ve been to a live show recently you may already own one, but it’s not available for purchase online yet because:

Right now I’m doing a special thing with the Creative Commons 2008 fundraising campaign that’s kind of exciting. Between now and the end of the year a $50 donation gets you a 1 Gb USB thumb drive with all 20 songs and the artwork, plus all the source tracks for all the songs. All the source tracks? Yes. It took me about a million hours, thank you very much. So if you’ve ever wanted to do some kind of kooky remix or mashup, or if you’ve ever just wanted to take these songs apart and see how they work, this would be just the thing for you.

This is an exclusive special super secret bonus package – donating 50 bucks to CC is the only way to get it so don’t even ask, you freeloaders. I’ve benefited immensely from Creative Commons licensing, so I’m very pleased to be able to support it in this way (with your money). Get it here.

The songs are (you may begin criticizing my selections now):

Code Monkey
Ikea
I Feel Fantastic
Mandelbrot Set
Tom Cruise Crazy
Shop Vac
Chiron Beta Prime
I’m Your Moon
My Monkey
Skullcrusher Mountain
I Crush Everything
When You Go
A Talk With George
You Ruined Everything
Creepy Doll
Mr. Fancy Pants
Baby Got Back
First of May
Re: Your Brains
The Future Soon

On to LA today, already regretting that I will not be able to continue eating the same delicious corned beef sandwich every day for the rest of my life: The Sentinel is my friend Dennis’s new restaurant, and it is my favorite new thing about SF.

The sandwiches are very good. Also, all of them have mayonnaise, which is correct.

Planes, Trains, Hodgman, originally uploaded by jcoulton.

It’s day 563 of the west coast leg of the Hodgman book tour and this
photo will give you some idea of the kind of luxurious pampering we
are enjoying. That’s a train, suckers.

Thanks to all the Seattle residents who came out to see us at Town
Hall, and special thanks to our pals John Roderick and Sean Nelson who
were so fun that I stopped caring whether or not the audience was
having a good time (though I think they were). John and Eric from the
Long Winters were with us again last night in Portland at the very fun
recording of the Live Wire radio show. Fun fun, all fun!

Today I bid a sad farewell to the gentle, gray northwest and fly to
beautiful San Francisco. Also, I should not have eaten that sausage I
just ate.

No rest for the weary: I’m on my way to Seattle to do a few west coast dates with the John Hodgman book tour. Please note that tomorrow night, Thursday November 6, John and I will be performing at Town Hall in Seattle. Joining us, local treasures and actual famous people John Roderick and Sean Nelson. IT IS GOING TO BE VERY BIG AND FUN (all caps courtesy of John Hodgman).

I can’t figure out how to put a proper link in this iPhone WordPress app, so I’m afraid you’ll have to cut and paste (which I also cannot do from here, ha ha). Regardless, buy your tickets here:

www.brownpapertickets.com/event/47299

Also: yes we can.

An entire pot of tea and a few adjustments in the set list got my voice through the show last night, with much assistance from the lovely people of Birmingham. It was a short show squeezed in between other things and it was set up and announced at the last minute, but turnout was still impressive, especially considering I am from another country entirely. Thanks to everyone who came out on a cold rainy night and tolerated my raspy honking. I haven’t spoken aloud yet this morning, which is part of the plan.

I’m sitting here in the hotel room enjoying my last opportunity for a little tea and biscuits, a lovely tradition that I wish was in my life always. I still can’t believe I just did six shows here on this side of the Atlantic. I’ve been thinking a lot on this trip about, guess what, the internet. All these crowds here in all these new places. It’s yet another example of this increasingly important global internet culture that’s happening – it no longer matters much where you live, you can still find your way to LOLCats or Numa Numa or Skullcrusher Mountain, or any of a thousand million trillion other dumb, funny, important ideas. There’s a group of people who are literally spread out all over the planet, and they’re all talking and thinking about the same stuff, and that has never ever happened before. And that group of people is just going to keep growing until it’s all of us, and what happens then?

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: the internet is going to be big. You may want to buy some stocks or something.

Thank you, accented strangers. I’ll be back soon…