Hey, what’s this, a blog?

The world has caught JoCo Cruise Crazy Fever! Not the entire world, but at least some of it! I’m gratified to see so many people signing up for a good time on a boat with me and my famous entertainer friends. It’s going to be so off the hook that the dial tone is going to stop and it’s going to start making that fast busy signal sound and then a recording is going to play that says “Please hang up the phone and try your call again.” I AM SERIOUS!

If you share my excitement then probably you’ll want to know about these new JoCo Cruise Crazy contests. Here are the things you can win:

1. Cruise Giveaway: win a free cruise for two!
2. Video Madness: win free awesome things from ThinkGeek!
3. Monarch of the Seas: win a fake royalty title that we made up and be forced to wear a dumb crown or something!

All the details can be found on this page right here. And I can assure you that these are not the kind of contests where when you win you get sent to a mysterious island with a smoke monster. The smoke monster will be on the boat (hint: the smoke monster is John Hodgman).

I talked about this in an interview already (and before I was supposed to) so some of you may have heard, but the thing that makes me most excited about this new record is that John Flansburgh is producing it. And yes, that’s THE John Flansburgh, who might be a giant. I opened for them a few times in the Spring, and that’s when we hatched this crazy plan. Of course I’ve been a fan for a long time, so I’m thrilled and flattered and all that stuff. I also think he’s going to bring some fun, edgy weirdness to the sound of things, and I’m hoping he’ll prevent it from being all slow songs about dead dogs in space.

Just yesterday we went into a real, like, STUDIO studio and recorded ourselves running through the set of new songs so we could hear how we sounded and make some arrangement tweaks. We sounded pretty good. This is going to be fun.

Thursday: Iron Horse in Northampton, MA
Friday: Somerville Theater in Somerville, MA
Later: More

Look out kids, six new songs coming atcha! The debut of this new enterprise is coming up next week when I’ll be trying out new stuff at shows in Northampton, MA on 7/22 and Somerville, MA on 7/23. Details on the Shows page – come on out and see us, we’re making HISTORY here people. At the very least I can promise you a lot of hilarious rookie mistakes. At best, they might be two kickass rock and roll shows.

Things are coming together nicely in rehearsals, and I have to say it’s sounding kind of awesome a lot of the time. Every day in every way I am a better and better electric guitar player. We’ve also got quite a few classic Coulton songs on the menu, and while they are not new, playing them with the band sure does make them shiny. We’re talking power trio right now: the drummer is Marty Beller (on loan from TMBG) and the bass player is Chris Anderson (on loan from Wired magazine JUST KIDDING IT’S A DIFFERENT CHRIS ANDERSON). They’re both great. We kind of rock sometimes even.

Also, any reports you’ve heard that the Somerville show is sold out are false – painfully, extremely, practically the opposite kind of false. Just saying.

Right, back to rocking.

I said it on the Twitters but I’ll say it again: it’s ON! And it is totally JoCo Cruise Crazy!

Come cruise with me, and MAYBE FALL IN LOVE (but probably not)! There are plenty more details on the site, but here are the basics: it’s a 6-day cruise on Holland America’s ms Eurodam from Ft. Lauderdale January 2-8, 2011 with ports of call at Half Moon Cay, Bahamas; Falmouth, Jamaica; and Georgetown, Cayman Islands. There will be entertainment of the comedy and music variety every day from me, Paul and Storm, John Hodgman, Wil Wheaton, Molly Lewis, Mike Phirman, and Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy from Rifftrax. It’s going to be fantastic.

Tickets are on sale: book now if you dare!

I asked on Twitter, but nobody seems to know the answer with any certainty, so my guess is that there isn’t one. There’s a funny voice that people do, usually for cute and/or annoying animal-like characters in cartoons and movies. A partial list of these characters includes: Glomer from the Punky Brewster cartoon, The Shmoo from various Hanna-Barbera disasters, Gizmo from Gremlins (that’s a falsetto version), Stitch from Lilo and Stitch, Bibble from the various Barbie Fairytopia movies (what? some of those Barbie fairies are hot). I want to know if there’s a technical name for this kind of voice, maybe something from a dark corner of a linguistics text, and I want to know what’s happening in my cranio-facial blabbitybloo when I do it.

Twitter responded to me with a few facts and theories: this might be hypernasality, it might also be a pharyngealized nasalized falsetto, the talent is not limited to men (though I can’t think of a female example in a movie or cartoon). It feels like making an R sound but more so. Something with the soft palatte?

Why is there not a written history of this technique and all its practitioners? We haven’t even invented a name for it? What is the internet good for if not for this?

I need an answer people.