Saturday, May 11, 2013

Ironically no longer ironic?

Holy Carp! (Seems more edgy than "Holy Mackerel," wouldn't you agree?)  It would appear that, although technically a Google search for "brent ironic" still points to me first, it actually points to the Facebook* fan page for this blog instead of the actual blog.**  (This blog is hosted by Google, ironically.)

What has happened here?  Have I posted too much non-ironic content?  Has Google tweaked their search algorithm to be irony-neutral?  Is the word "irony" massively and inappropriately overused, thus diluting my content?

It's probably that last thing.  I blame Alanis Morissette for releasing a song about irony*** that contains absolutely nothing ironic in it.  Hey Alanis! If you read this blog, and I know you do, you ruined irony for everyone.  I was at a meeting last week and someone actually said "For lunch today I went to Subway to get a sub, and ironically I got a Panini instead."  That's not ironic, that's just a very specific sandwich option at a sandwich shop.

On a related note to hipsters: Getting an iced tea at Starbucks while wearing a bolo, driver's cap, scarf and Atari tee shirt with rainbow legwarmers under Capri skinny jeans and slippers is not ironic.  It's certainly a fashion risk, but not ironic.  You can call it ironic if you like, but you are still wearing all that crap at a Starbucks in public, and people can see you.  We can.  And you look stupid.

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* Facebook is a popular social media site.  You can research how to get a free account here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook
** You can find this blog at this address: http://dilbrent.blogspot.com/
*** I forget the name.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Over the Rainbow: Banjo Edition

As I am sure most of you are aware, most of you don't know that The Wizard of Oz is the best American fantasy movie ever, according to the American Film Institute:


Furthermore, the AFI and RIAA have ranked "Over The Rainbow" as the #1 "Song of the Century" and the "greatest movie song of all time":


Like most of you, I thought it would be a good idea to re-score the frequently reproduced "Over the Rainbow" hit for electric guitar.  Turns out that was done already, like a dozen times, so I thought "Hey, people hate the banjo, right?  Surely no one has done an arrangement of OTR* for such a terrible instrument," so I decided to do an arrangement for banjo.  Duh, right?  Turns out people have done that too, also like a dozen times, but by then I had already put a few hours into it and I said "whatever."
So here is my arrangement of OTR* for banjo, piano, drums, and several other banjos: (**),(***)


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* OTR is an "acronym" for other larger words. Read more about acronyms at your local library!

**  For those of you who want a ton of "Over the Rainbow" banjo midi files, I strongly recommend avoiding Wendy's Wizard of Oz, which only has six.

*** Some of you may be wondering how I got Judy Garland to star in my video.  Full disclosure: this footage was actually from the original movie and not a scene-by-scene remake as you probably assumed.  I actually found the video "dance montage" (as the kids call it) on YouTube (as the kids call it).