In which my daughter discovers Irish folk music

My four-year-old daughter has kept a steady war of attrition going to extend her bedtime ritual as much as possible, likely to ensure that no siblings muscle in on her time. One facet of the ritual is that she has me sing her a few songs at lights out, but in recent months, a twist was added: she'll request a "mystery song" - one that she's never heard before, and if she likes it, she bestows it the honour of having it go on her Google Music playlist (the playlist of non-kiddy songs so we have something bearable to listen to on long drives).

It only took a few weeks to exhaust the memory bank of pop-punk classics I'd happily sing to a Canadian 4 year old, so I resorted to looking up lyrics on my phone. Sensing that this fool's errand was proving too easy thanks to the smartphone, she began to introduce complexity by requesting songs about certain topics, or even that feature specific words.

And then it happened. "Sing me a mystery song. That's from Ireland".

Easy peasy, right? There's four decades of U2 pablum that would easily tick the boxes. I could hum out Where the Streets Have No Name, or I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking for, or One. I could hit the mark while edifying my daughter on pop classics she would surely encounter down the line.

But that's not what I thought of. For some reason my brain decided that the right answer would be "Danny Dyer" by the Rubberbandits; an often filthy song that amounts to a series of contrived, bizarre claims delivered in a piss-take cockney accent.

Looks child-friendly enough!

These are some of the things Danny Dyer claims to have done in Danny Dyer by The Rubberbandits:

• Doing speed with aboriginies
• Eating the country of Greece while riding a saddled shark
• Urinating in a kettle

There's a shortened version of it online that was used in their TV Show that should bring you up to speed in less than 2.5 minutes: go have a look.

Father-of-the-year material that I am, I swapped out the lyrics on the fly with child-friendly stuff, and a few minutes later, bedtime ritual was over, and I was free to spend my evening not updating my blog for the 1,630th straight day. 

The next day, I'm happily filling up my coffee cup in the kitchen, when my wife corners me and through gritted teeth asks me "why is our child singing "Danny Dyer, Danny Dyer, get 'im in a headlock?"

Our initial hopes that she would forget about it are completely dashed after a week of repeated asks. The Google Assistant refuses to play it for her, and she's never encountered this Content Filter issue before. Why can't she hear the song? We tell her there's no recording of it that survived on the internet because "it's from almost ten years ago and it's from Ireland, so nobody has a copy."

Undeterred, she asks me to ask my Irish friends. She asks me to track down the original artists (after asking if they're still alive). And more pressingly, she asks to sing the song to her night after night.

With more time to think about the lyrics I try to clean it up more, but I'm rebuked; "no Dad, that's not the right words". My toddler is castigating me for getting the censored words wrong, so I tell her that nobody has a trace of the real words, that it's been lost to time. The mystery around the song only grows and grows, it's now a part of her Irish heritage, it's even more important now that she hears it.

So I relent, and I tell her I'll try and find a copy. And I do what any loving father would in that situation: I use software trained by machine learning to split out the song into component stems; rewrite the lyrics, and inserted my own recorded vocals.

The results are... well, a bit of an abomination, as you can hear for yourself: 

Abomination or not - she loved it, and it has been bestowed with the great honour of being #1 on her regular playlist, so I'm guaranteed to hear my awful iPad-recorded vocals multiple times a week until my kid tires of the concept of music itself. How long could that take?

Picking on the little guy...

I'm not quite sure what to say about this. I checked my e-mail a few moments ago to be greeted by the following:



Seems one of my videos was reported for copyright violation. A video I liked because it would probably keep the people in it from ever entering public office. A video that garnered a paltry 1,011 hits over the course of 14 months! Surely there are bigger fish to fry? What's worse is what's said within the notification I got by e-mail:

In order to prevent this from happening, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others.

Seriously? What's the point? A YouTube without copyright infringement is like Islam without the misogyny. Where's the fun in that? I was fully aware of all the talk about eliminating the copyright infringement, but I thought that it was just to keep the greedy corporate whores happy!

Enjoy the videos while you can, dear reader, for their days are numbered.

(Until I upload them elsewhere, at least)

EDIT: The video in question has been reuploaded to MegaVideo - hopefully they won't submit to corporate pressure!

Homoeroticism for Beginners

Chances are if you're a regular reader of this blog, you've already seen this video, but oddly enough; I've yet to feature it here.

This is a video I made two years ago(!) and I made it because I had a few hours to spare, and a new video-editing program to try out. After about two hours (which is very little time for what it normally takes), I had something different from my usual output that I was quite fond of. I slapped it online before giving it any polish (kudos to whoever points out the picture I used twice), or thought up a suitable title before the montage starts. Regardless, it's one of my favourites.

Please to enjoy:

It was the first video I uploaded on YouTube, and is the third most popular (beaten by this crappy video taken at a football game, and the video I made at the Taking Back Sunday concert - both of which piggyback on the name of what I documented). I attribute its popularity (1,160 since 24/07/06 at the time of writing) to the fact that it has the word 'gay' in the title - the thumbnail (generated automatically by whatever frame lays in the middle of the video) happened to land on a decidedly un-straight picture of me with a flower in my hair, and the song the video is set to is quite excellent!

My favourite part about this video once it hit the internet? The comments!

Of course - I clicked into this guy's profile to find more information:
A person with a poor grasp English and an interest in meeting people featured in a video riddled with homoerotic poses who is from the Philippines and uses a parrot as his avatar has seen one of my videos? That's why I love the internet!

Let me know what you think in the comments. Compliments homosexual in nature welcomed (as are admonishments).

Those Hard-to-Reach Places

It seems that October has shaped up to be a month of not-very blogworthy busywork for ol’ Sully here. In times like this, just for the sake of having something to blog about, I pilfer the Sully & Mega Productions back catalogue; a collection of videos we made between the ages of 15 and 17 or so.

I’m not quite sure how much back story I can offer about this one... At least, not without getting myself in trouble with an old friend. I do urge you to bear in mind that this tale, believe it or not, is based on a true story. Remarkably enough, the opening 20 seconds shows the actual moment of ‘inspiration’ that prompted the following 2 minutes of poorly-acted depravity!

Please to enjoy:

My Skit

To celebrate UL's admission that they screwed up, and to continue my quest to find those elusive splashes of colour to add to the blog, I present to you this rather lame skit!

This was a project for my TV-Production class in Robert Morris University, and serves more as proof of my technical ability to prepare a single-camera skit than a reflection of what my creative output is like. We were assigned a rigid frame, in that we had to produce "an ironic video description of a word from Abrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary".

I personally find this clip quite enjoyable, as Chris (playing the money-hungry/pervy doctor) ad-libbed pretty much everything that was funny. And if you're interested, I can tell you that my initial 'vision' for a more cerebral, ironic approach to humour was ditched in favour of a much more visceral, albeit 'dumber' style, as the teacher acted as Producer and had to clear everything... That's right - I sold out for an A.

One last thing - sorry about the pointless Grey's Anatomy bit at the start - that was also part of the package - to 'prove' that we could edit... It didn't have to make sense!

Right then - on with the show!

Giving Taking Back Sunday my Saturday

When it was announced that Taking Back Sunday would be playing at Robert Morris University, I was a little dubious. That was, of course, until I found out the tickets were $10. I'm not exactly a Taking Back Sunday fan, but I've listened to their CDs, and I don't think anybody could pass up seeing a band live for little under €7.50.

We were intentionally late for the concert, and missed Armor For Sleep's set, and most of UnderOath, which meant that we'd be spending less time waiting for the only band we knew or cared about. When I walked in I was hugely impressed.

It was a real concert. There were people everywhere, great sound, and a decent light show. I didn't spend much time observing the emo-teeny-boppers, but my friend Krampe did overhear one sullen emo-kid profoundly say to another sullen emo-kid something along the lines of “Dude. This is what heaven should be like”.

Taking Back Sunday took to the stage, and I pushed my way to the front. How close exactly?


Pretty damn close.

I took some nice photos and cool videos, and edited together a little video, purely for the purposes of trying to elicit feelings of jealousy from my younger brother, who I believe has yet to experience the joys of powering your way to the front of a concert and being within spitting distance of famous rock-star types. It was sweaty, and disgusting, and I stank of pre-pubescent perspiration by the end of the night, but it was well worth it, especially since I got a video out of it.

About the video: all the pics and footage are from my digital camera, and I dubbed 'What's it Feel Like to be a Ghost?' over it, as the audio capture on the camera was painful to listen to. Oddly enough, considering I rarely put myself in my videos, and this is about TBS, I'm in it... Kindof - you can see my forehead at three minutes and seven seconds... If you're wondering about some of the shaky footage – that's me getting kicked in the back of the head by some insane crowd-surfer.



Be sure to leave a comment!

Where does the time go?

This March has been quite an eventful one, almost a perfect balance of good and bad. The good parts were the 12 days at home with my family and friends, purchasing a Nintendo Wii, and getting to spend a week with the lady-friend...

The bad consisted of being refused-re-entry to the United States as the result of another person's blunder, paying in excess of $600 to fix the problem, being met with resistance when trying to get myself reimbursed, winding up on the Suspected Persons list of the American Government, and trying to weasel my way off that. Things got worse last Saturday, as I got sick for the first time in at least 8 months. I didn't have so much as a sniffle all this time, so when I got a bit of a sore throat on Saturday, I tried to ignore it. I couldn't ignore the exhaustion I felt on Sunday, and spent all day sleeping.

When the RMU doctor look a quick glance and said "Tonsillitis", I was puzzled. My tonsils were removed when I was around 10 years old. I had barely spluttered that out before he flatly said "They grew back". Cool. He wasn't done there though; oh no - in a way that only he could get away with, he said "Seán, you look like shit".

The good doc reckons I might also have Mono - I'll remain sceptical until the blood tests come back, but in the meantime, I feel as though I should be getting to the point.

March hasn't been the best blogging month, and for this I do apologise, but it has been an awful academic month. Granted, I haven't taken any exams or anything, but I've so much work due for Monday I'm beginning to wonder if the 'Sully-magic' (yes, I'm that conceited to refer to dumb luck as Sully-magic) that has gotten me by in such predicaments before is going to pull through this time... The smart money is against me at the moment, as magic takes energy, something I have precious little to spare at the moment.

But this isn't that kind of blog - the dull 'dear diary' drivel that attempts to arouse feelings of sympathy from the reader while dwelling on insipid introspective notions, fuelled by an emo-soul and a 'they don't understand me' complex. Sorry that from the opening paragraphs of this post you may have thought the conclusion would be a sob-riddled "mom's rite - no boi wil evar take me 2 d prom!" Anyway - I'm getting to the point; the justification for this post...

So, as stated, I was sick, relaxing in bed, and looking for some videos to watch on my hard-drive, and I stumbled across this, and I laughed. And I hope that if you have the patience to sit through the admittedly slow 2 minute intro, you'll laugh too.

Enjoy one of the oddest videos I've ever had a hand in making, although to this day, I insist it was all the doing of the chaps you see dancing on your screen!



What do you think? Will they become an internet sensation, destined to be forever synonymous with YouTube, featured in the obligatory montage that precedes each news piece on 'viral-video'?

UPDATE 08/05/08: Guess not - YouTube yanked it for copyright violation, so if you absolutely need your fix, here you are!

Lazy Blog Entry #44

It's been a busy few days, and I'm six days into my second semester here at RMU. From these few days, I've realised that I'm going to have to put in a little more effort this semester than I did last time around to get the same kind of results.

I am, however, taking a fantastic class in Television Production, and I'll be helping out at the College TV station, which is hugely exciting for me. I'll probably end up posting whatever clips of the work I'll be doing over the coming few months on this blog, so I thought I'd get around to uploading some of my older stuff to YouTube - if for nothing else other than as a way for you to see how I've 'progressed' in my video-editing hobby.

This is a quasi-music video to Knapweed's Androgynous Andy, and I think it's decent. It's not how I wanted it to turn out, and there are a couple of shots that still annoy me after almost two years of the video being finished; the result of letting the band members have final say on how everything pieced together.



I do apologise that I've not been updating much as of late, but I'd rather not post just for the sake of posting, and I won't have much to say about anything until I find some spare time! In two weeks I'll be heading to Chicago, which should provide some fodder for a hefty picture-based entry, but in the interim, I'm planning on putting up a small piece about the people I'm hanging out with in the States.

Technical Difficulties, please stand by...

Knew it'd happen sooner or later - if you've noticed the blog is a bit more drab looking these days it's because the pictures were linked from my Bebo profile, and Bebo have since made them unavailable. Seems all they did was change the filename, so I might to and change every pic's filename (ugh), or maybe just re-upload them to the Blogger site (double ugh), whatever I decide to do, it won't be for a few days (I have a ton of homework, and I've procrastinated myself to a point of 'do or die'), so to distract you away from this, I'm going to just rely on my old tricks and show you a video that me and Mega made back in the day.

Here it is! I uploaded it to YouTube a few weeks ago, so if you've checked out my profile, you've seen it already, but now rewatch with the knowledge that it's my favourite!

The Trip To Niagara Falls

So I went to see Niagara Falls a fortnight ago, tagging along with Joanna, Claire, Luci and Tom.

Since we had to get up at 6am or so to catch a bus, I decided, in my infinite wisdom, that since I was going out the night before anyway it would be a really good idea to just stay up altogether. I achieved this by hanging out with my friend Caitlin over at her apartment til after 4 or so, then spending an hour or so cramming a weekend-full of clothing and electronics into my schoolbag.

The lack of sleep left me in a state I can only describe as temporary narcolepsy; as for the rest of the day, if I sat down or stopped talking, I'd fall asleep. So I slept in the taxi on the way to the bus terminal... Then slept on the way from Pittsburgh to Erie, in the terminal in Erie, on the bus from Erie to Buffalo, and from Buffalo to Niagara...

The buses were quite uncomfortable, but sheer exhaustion was enough to overcome any superficial worries of discomfort, which was nice, because it made the travel less of a chore.

I'm already a little hazy on the details, so I won't pay much attention to chronology, but we ate out at a decent restaurant the first night, and the girls availed of the fact that Canada's legal drinking age is 19 (I myself was quite happy to no longer be considered a legal 'minor'), we walked around the tacky, neon lit area that houses all the tourist traps and restaurants. Over the course of the weekend, we managed to eat at Wendy's twice, which made me pretty happy (Wendy's is the best fast food I've encountered here so far), despite the guy serving me being an incompetent fool who charged me for a large meal but gave me a regular portion...

Of course, we checked out the falls, and rode 'The Maid of The Mist' boat, that sails over into the mist of the falls, soaking us in the process. The falls themselves are... really something, I guess. I was expecting them to be bigger. Or maybe I was expecting to be more impressed by them... How mesmerised can one expect to be by a bit of water falling over an edge? I'm pretty sure that nature in general is wasted on me, but I looked at the falls for a moment, and in my head just ticked another thing off my list of things to do before I die!

Seeing as I was yet to shoot a single frame of footage on my neglected (but beloved) camcorder, I decided to take it along, figuring I'd find something interesting to film. The end result is this four-minute long montage that I spent a lot more time than usual tweaking - of course, I could pick it apart if you asked me to, but for the most part, I'm happy about how it turned out (mostly because of the class new program I got for editing video). So anyways, I'll put it here, and I hope you enjoy it (and damnit, if you do, leave a comment and say so - I enjoy feedback!)

Nothing new here

Had the day off today to get some study for my exam tomorrow. Well, it's now three o'clock in the morning, and I can tell you I've done about a half hour of work so far. So where has my day gone? Well - I've probably spent about three hours playing NCAA on the PS2 (it's a college football game) with my suitemates (we've got a little tourney going), and a good two hours of my day went into going to a batting cage; so I got a feel for the difficulty those baseball players have in hitting those balls that are thrown at such speeds.

Rather than go too much into it, I'll promise to upload full impressions and pictures of it over the next few days, but for now, I'm just letting you know that I've uploaded the Gran Canaria Holiday Montage onto my YouTube account - most of you are probably sick of it after seeing the long tenure it enjoyed on mine and a few other Bebo pages, but it's here anyways, with slightly higher resolution, and much better sound than before.



That's all for now, blog-fans! Expect another big entry sometime after Friday - I've much to report on that I'm holding off until I can give it the attention it deserves.

Preview

Good evening blogfans! Just posting this because it's been a week since my last post, and I don't want anybody worrying about me. I've been pretty busy this past week, getting more into this whole American education system - making new friends and observing the blatant differences between Irish and American culture, getting a feel for this room-sharing thing, and I also squeezed in another trip to New York for the Labour Day weekend, so I'll have a ton of pictures, a video of Gráinne jumping into a puddle, and some impressions and whatnot as soon as I get a chance! Oh, and while I'm at it, I may as well write my impressions of the film Beerfest, seeing as it'll be hitting Irish cinemas sometime soon. Hopefully I'll begin clearing this backlog tomorrow, as this weekend I'll be attending the Pittsburgh Irish Festival.

So how do I justify a post that only mentions what I've been up to without discussing it?

How about another video?

Here's a Video!

I just felt like uploading this - hope you don't mind!



Memories, eh? Those awful mornings after the 'campouts', spraying Daly with the Jif we found in the garage, randomly jumping off the roof onto a tiny mattress, Maurice nearly tearing Pa's shoulder off...

We were really, really stupid kids!