It’s Christmas and I’m here with the in-laws (yes, Brookline) surrounded by cakes and cookies and newly opened presents. After a few days here I will head for the deep woods, where I will hunt, kill, and dress a moose. Or maybe I will skip that and eat fatty foods and drink beer while sitting on the couch, we’ll see how I feel. In either case, I’m outie till the new year. I hope you’re all having fun winter holiday times, because I sure am.

It’s been another great year here at Coulton industries, thanks in no small part to all of you who read, listen, record, send monkeys in the mail, etc. I’ve got a few songs in the pipeline and a few new toys itching for the studio, a trip to the west coast in January with more touring to follow, and this FREAKING concert DVD which is still very nearly finished and targetted for February release (I hope). And probably other exciting things that I haven’t even thought of yet will happen.

Thank you all, and here’s hoping the years continue to get better and better until everything is awesome everywhere all the time.

2009 here we come…

Nerdcore compilation that includes (among many other excellent things) me singing Still Alive with Felicia Day at PAX 2008 – available now for just ten bucks. All proceeds go to Child’s Play, a worthy charity started by the Penny Arcade folks that gives toys and games to kids in hospitals (hard to argue with that, no?).

Buy it here!

Ad hoc, virtual Jonathan Coulton cover band The Mandelbrot Set (born in the forums, like all other crazy schemes) has completed their first cover, a soothing version of Re: Your Brains. It’s quite nice, and were it not for the subject matter I’d say it would be right at home on some Wes Anderson soundtrack. But for the moment, it is only available on the internet.

Thanks crazy forum people!

And speaking of crazy forum people, I recently was made aware of a couple of foreign language (to me) Jonathan Coulton areas. Here is this forum for speakers of French: joco.forumactif.fr and this fan page for the burgeoning fanbase in Hungary: koponyaroppanto.wordpress.com/

There is also this Camp Bachelor cover: www.myspace.com/sparechangequartet

There is also this piano medley: spaceparanoids.net/2008/11/joco-medley/

Don’t you people have work to do?

For those of you who prefer to have your music on an audio disk (or “CD”) instead of a jump drive, JoCo Looks Back is now available for purchase at CD Baby, kind of just barely in time for Christmas, sort of. (N.B. the CD does not include the source tracks, just the songs.) But man, what a lovely gift this would make, especially for someone who has not yet drunk the delicious JoCo-flavored kool-aid.

Buy it here!

The jump drive with this album and the source tracks is still available too with a $50 donation to Creative Commons, and will be there through the end of the year.

(I should mention – it may periodically say that it’s sold out over the next couple of days, it’s just the way CDBaby does the initial stocking of a new title. Rest assured, I am pushing them out to them quickly so as to keep them from running out, and even now am heading out to the post office to send a bunch more.)

Two kinds! First, here is this Christmas message I recorded for dear old Ken Plume at Quick Stop Entertainment. He always tries to get me to do something for his annual Holiday Havoc extravaganza, and I usually weasel out of it in some way. This year was no exception. And yes, those are the same potato sticks I was eating at the end of the Monkey Shines credit sequence. Back in the 80s, on television. Thank you Ken Plume for all the entertainment you make available to us at a single, quick stop.

And second, it’s a JoCo advent calendar filled with Ultrastar Deluxe karaoke files! What? Right. I am barely hanging on myself here, but I gather that one of the elves in the forums has used the open source karaoke game Ultrastar Deluxe and the CC licensing of my karaoke versions to create 25 playable JoCo “levels.” Do you kids still call them levels? A new song will be released every day between now and Festivus. Sing along and win (points I think?)! And no, I cannot help you with installing anything or learning how to sing. Thanks Spektugalo and SKillMaster and Silverbeam and Blindguard for making it happen. (By the way, those are the names of my reindeer.)