Bruner Blog

The problem with any blog stunt like my recent pledge to post a UkeTube video a day (for an undetermined period of time) is that now I’m tied to the computer to actually post every day a ukulele video from YouTube. It’s not that there aren’t enough — that was my original point, that there are limitless numbers — but I have other things going on in my life and finding the time to post daily is a drag.

Tonight I’m going to see Ween, who I suspect will not be playing ukulele (though you never know with those guys) and my work calendar is packed today, so I begin the day with this ditty from actor William H. Macy, doing a send-up on his co-stars in last summer’s comedy Wild Hogs. I didn’t have any desire to see the film (despite my other big hobby lately being motorcycling, but that’s a story for later blog posts), so this isn’t a plug for the film. The chords he’s playing are nothing special, but his strumming technique is slick enough that I suspect he’s actually not a bad uker. Anyway, seemed like a good idea to pepper this thing with some celebrity strummers to inspire the tots. Enjoy.

A uke classic, among the many I’ve been tasked to learn by friends, performed by Kermit and friends.

Last night I was looking for a uke performance of Crazy, and instead I found this wonderful performance of a song I’d never heard of called “Tom Cruise Crazy.” Everything about this clip is fabulous: the performer’s ineffable adorableness; her seemingly effortless uke chops; her star-in-waiting voice, and the song’s hilarious lyrics. The song is not hers but that of another talent I’d never heard of before, Jonathan Coulton. I haven’t explored the rest of the guy’s catalog yet, but I look forward to doing so.

The performer, Sweetafton23, tells us relatively little about herself on her UkeTube profile, aside from that she lives in the LA area. In response to my gushing comment on another of her song posts, she replied with a few details: she is indeed a bewitching temptress; no, she’s not a professional performer; no, she’s not planning any NYC gigs in the near future, and, worst of all, no, I can’t bear her children anytime soon (she did leave the window for hope, though!). (That last line I think I’m over-playing lately. But, you see it’s funny because I’m a man, so I can’t actually bear children. Right?)

UPDATE: Yikes! I’m old and creepy! I am suddenly and completely cured of my crush on Sweetafton23 when I came to the conclusion last night, after Googling up on her a bit, that this delightful little talent is something like 17 years old! I found posts where she was talking about looking forward to getting her driver’s license! Aaaaaaaa! Now I have to focus my obsession on my jealous awe at her ukey genius.

A friend crashing at my place for a few days suggests I start a site HotLadiesofUkulele.com. My ticket to fortune, perhaps? There are actually quite a number of them, but not to take anything away from Sweetafton23, I’ll save other links for later posts. Meanwhile, I’ll make that a new tag.

Ukulele Eric is a prolific UkeTube poster and a bit of a wackjob, judging from some of his monologue and poetry pieces, but as this song demonstrates, he’s a talented uker and an even better singer.

As some readers know, I started playing the ukulele a year ago to prove to myself that old dogs can still learn new tricks. I’m humble. I’m not very good at all. But I love it to an unnatural extent and plan someday to be a uke god in my own right. I’m patient. I expect that will take a long time.

Meanwhile, I draw constant inspiration from the seeming limitless number of amazing uke players are there are out there in Internet land. I find most of them on a little site I like to call UkeTube. I think for a while I’ll demonstrate the point with daily UkeTube postings.

Here’s one from a guy I just discovered today, Brook Adams. Apparently in this live performance he did all the songs from Abbey Road on a uke. This is “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” Prepare to be amazed.

New jazz singing sensation Madeleine Peyroux has been compared, according to the first line in her Wikipedia entry, to Billie Holiday. No shit. She sounds like all the European jazz singer who feels obliged to do a Louis Armstrong impersonation. Her sound’s resemblance to Holiday isn’t notable; it’s blatant.

More.

In addition to loving my wife a whole lot, I woke up this morning and realized I am also in love with Nelly McKay.

So, while in beta, I blogged about how I was so pleased with having ordered my whole Thanksgiving fixings on FreshDirect.com. I since canceled the order, as all of our friends are flakes! Or, maybe more to the point, we’re not as popular as we’d like to think. Most of those we invited already knew they had somewhere better to go, but a few fence-sitters strung us along for a couple of weeks before bailing on us a few days ago. Adi called and informed our last committed guest, filmmaker Nick Zedd, who seemed relieved, saying, “Now if we could only cancel Christmas, too, that would be perfect.” Adi concurred. Grinches.

Hello again dear readers. Notice something new? My dear friend Steve Carlson has helped me with a redesign, change to WordPress from MovableType and switch to a new host. Thanks Steve!

We’re still tweaking the new design a bit, but I’m reasonably happy with it. What do you think? I just want to freshing it up a bit, as long as we were moving servers and platforms.

Something else new you might notice is that I’m blogging again! Yes, the hiatus was longer than I intended, but I feel refreshed and am backlogged with things to say, so stay tuned.

I made a lovely vegetable curry tonight with a product from Maya Kaimal. Said product had sat in my fridge for a while, so I checked the expiration date. It said, “Best if used by 11-21-07. That’s today (or at least it was when I started writing this post). I guest I timed it perfectly.

I just completed a monstrous shop for Thanksgiving today on FreshDirect.com, an excellent NY-area online grocery. Surprising the company hasn’t yet tried to branch out beyond the NY region, but I guess they’re focused on excellence before world domination. What a pleasure to have all that shopping taken care of on November 4th with a commitment of delivery sometime between 9am and noon on Wednesday November 21, the day before Thanksgiving.

They even have a feature enabled finally that I’ve been thinking of for years: the ability to choose a recipe and then have all the associated ingredients populate in your shopping basket automatically. I don’t use Fresh Direct more than a few times a year, but it’s always a great experience.