…SONG covered, that is! Get it?

The Fourth volume of Trevor Peach’s one-song-a-week project (AKA “Squandered Promise of a Wasted Year”) has begun, and this one is a pretty awexome hum-dinger. In his previous volume he did remakes of some of his own “classic” songs. But in this volume he is going to be putting his own spin on other musicians’ songs with a series of cover songs! He’s released the track list, and it includes some delightfully surprising and bizarre choices. Here they all are (and you can listen to them all) right here:

1. Black Sparrow – J Hacha De Zola

2. Your Mother Doesn’t Love You – Jason Brunet

3. Long Way To Fall – The Electric NoNo

4. Jesus, Friend of Sinners – Joshua Stephens

5. First 48 – Chris Blount

6. Secret Squirrel – Robb Benson

7. Nightmares – Open Mike Eagle

8. Nightmares – The Hoot Hoots

9. Blueberries – Julia Massey

10. Shake – The Great UM

11. White Whale – Kid in the Attic

12. Mr. Boots – Incanus

13. Dada Pops – Chubby Mummy

Volume IV marks a musical departure from the previous three volumes as well, because they’re not being produced by Geoff B. Gibbs. They’re being produced by Vincent Fresco. That’s right: the Vincent Fresco who produced Trevor Peach’s very first EP back 12 years ago!

The first cover has already been released. You can take a wissen right here:

I’m particularly excited to see how Trevor and Vincent handle Open Mike Eagle’s hip-hop and Chubby Mummy’s general incompetence. Also, there are rumors that there might be a couple of bonus tracks that aren’t listed here. There’s some exciting things in the pipeline from Trevor Peach this summer FO SHO.

Video Game of the Month:

Google Maps Pac-Man
Wha-what!? Starting yesterday, if you’re in Google Maps and you zoom in to a certain magnification, a little box appears next to the “Google Earth” box. It’s very important that you click that box. When you do, the streets you’re viewing will suddenly become overlayed with dots… ghosts will appear… and you’ll be able to play Pac-Man on those streets!

Pac-Man on Capitol Hill!

Album of the Month:

Three Ninjas: The Sadness Will Last Forever
Three Ninjas releases his second full-length old-school country album, and it’s even better than the first (Alcohol & Isolation)! It’s old-timey depressing country songs about drinking and lost loves and horrible lives. There are a couple of cover songs mixed in amongst the originals, but Three Ninjas’s songwriting skills in this genre are so honed that I’d bet you wouldn’t be able to tell me which ones they are (unless you happened to have heard of them already). The music craft has been even more finely-tuned from his previous outings. I don’t wanna call it “polished” because that implies a certain slickness and dullness whereas this album has a very skillful rawness. A “realness” I guess I should say. Listen; it’s good.

TV Show of the Month:

Yo Gabba Gabba!
This is my 17-month-old daughter’s favorite TV show. Sure, it’s a very-little-kids’ show, but Yo Gabba Gabba has a pedigree and a spirit that is sorely lacking from most very-little-kids’ shows. What other show in this genre has musical performances from the likes of Weezer, The Flaming Lips, Erykah Badu, Cornelius, The Shins, and The Roots (just to name a very few), most of which perform original songs written just for this show! Yo Gabba Gabba also has a wry self-awareness of its own ridiculousness that I especially appreciate, particularly with the over-the-top cheerfulness of the host, DJ Lance Rock. Watch (if you can find it) the episode co-starring Jack Black and tell me that I’m wrong. And then watch the “DJ Lance’s Super Music & Toy Room” episode and just marvel at the epic awesomeness that keeps pouring from the screen. TRUST ME.

One Man: Three Ninjas!

THIS IS VERY EXCITING! Three Ninjas himself has personally provided me with the exclusive world premier of the new song “Too Bad We Met” from his upcoming album The Sadness Will Last Forever!

That means you, my friends, get to have FIRST LISTEN before the album drops at the end of the month:

You should pre-order The Sadness Will Last Forever so that you can enjoy more songs like this the moment they are released!

Help Three Ninjas’s Sadness Last Forever!

Hi. My pal Three Ninjas has two big life events coming up:

1. He’s moving to New Orleans (boo)
2. He’s releasing a new Album (yay)

You can help BOTH of those things happen by pre-ordering his soon-to-be-finished upcoming album, The Sadness Will Last Forever! You can pay what you want for an album full of excellent, authentic country music. Like this sample (from his previous album, Alcohol and Isolation) here:

You know you want more o’ that. Three Ninjas is running a GoFundMe for this pre-order. Go there now and become overwhelmed with anticipation (until the end of the Month, when the album will prolly be released).

It’s crunch time: we’re down to the last couple of days before that big Chrissymiss holiday that I hear a bunch about. It’s easy to get all stress-ified this time of year, so it’s always important to seek out some holiday cheer. Here are some suggestions of mine on how to find the cheer this year:

Enjoy Some Holiday Lights

Merry Christmas from Zoolights, Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium’s annual holiday celebration where they dress up the zoo with millions of Christmas lights in all sorts of Christmassy displays! What could be more Christmassy than these:

Christmas Scorpions!

The Christmas Spider!

Well, I can’t say that I’m too familiar with the Christmas Scorpions and Spiders… but I guess they might help put you in the mood? How about we look at some lights that remind us of the savior for whom this holiday is really celebrated:

Our Dread Lord and Savior, Cthulhu!

If that doesn’t put you in the holiday mood of cheer, how about…

Listen to Some Holiday Music

Musician Three Ninjas has put out a little holiday EP! With songs titles like “Joy & Goodwill,” “The Birth of Our Savior (is the Death of my Dream),” and “It’s an Agonizingly Slow Death,” this is sure to coat you liberally in some holiday cheer:

Hmm… maybe depressing country music isn’t your thing this time of year? Well, how about music from world-renowned, highly-honored actor and performer Sir Christopher Lee?

Wow, that’s some really hardcore death metal, isn’t it? Maybe you should download Sir Christopher’s latest song, “Darkest Carols, Faithful Sing” here and listen to it over and over again at full volume to blast some holiday cheer into your ear.

No? Let’s try…

Watch Some Made-For-TV Holiday Movies

What could be more heartwarming than some good ol’ made-for-TV movies about the holidays? Luckily for us Twitter user @audipenny has watched them all for you and has reviewed them here. Here’s a sample of what you can enjoy:

A Rake That Was A Manger Too

Named 2009’s “What Is This. No Seriously What” film of the year, a small-town rake drives, yes drives, into town and proves to everyone that rakes that drive cars into towns can also be outside rooms where Jesuses are born, god my head never stops hurting, do you think there is a baby in there

Sound good? No? You should read through the rest of them.

Still not feeling the holiday spirit? Feeling more of a horrorday spirit? Well, there’s always one thing you can do: put the power in your own hands by creating your own holiday cheer from scratch…

Make Some Holiday Snowflakes

Make your own paper snowflakes. Don’t know how? You’re in luck because I wrote a detailed tutorial a few years ago. You can make beautiful snowflakes like this:

The Snowflake Devourer

If the threat of world annihilation from Galactus, the dreaded World Devourer doesn’t make you feel some holiday cheer, then I don’t know what will.

HAPPY HOLIDAYSES 2014!

Tweeter of the Month:
@audipenny
Perhaps the most laugh-out-loud Twitter talent out there right now, Audrey Farnsworth crafts tweet jokes that seem to start out in a safe, predictable way, but quickly veer off into bizarre surrealism. She is a brilliant mixture of mundane and insane. I absoluterly LORVE this kind of humor. It reminds me a Jack Handey in a very palpable way. It was hard for me to pick just a couple of tweets from her, so here are six:

I'd love to stay but I've got that flu of where if you keep talking, my arms turn into shovels and I just start digging

— audrey farnsworth (@audipenny) April 29, 2014

It's so good to see you, can you tell I'm lying, are my eyes doing that thing of where arms grow out of them and push you away

— audrey farnsworth (@audipenny) April 28, 2014

Catch me in the clubs surfboarding into your heart on a saltine

— audrey farnsworth (@audipenny) April 27, 2014

How far along into the home brewing process before it's real beer I'm making and not just baby bats in hospital gowns all over my house

— audrey farnsworth (@audipenny) April 26, 2014

Life hack: put a pair of glasses on a roasted ham and just stare at it and and scream and don't move anymore forever

— audrey farnsworth (@audipenny) April 24, 2014

Romance your partner by taking the form of a tortilla, wrapping yourself around your boyfriend & screaming, "U HAVE NOWHERE TO GO, BEAN MAN"

— audrey farnsworth (@audipenny) April 12, 2014

Album of the Month:
Alcohol & Isolation by Three Ninjas
Old-school, howling, angry, depressed, authentic country music. None of this pop-country crap that has dominated the country music scene for the last 30 years. I wrote about this album a little while ago. And I went to its album release party on Tuesday night. Here’s a photo of that:

And here’s a sample song. Take a wissen; it’s good stuffs:

Also, if you manage to track down a physical copy of the CD, there are GOBS of bonus songs at the end! DO IT!

Game of the Month:
Adventure Time: Card Wars
There was an episode of Adventure Time a while back where Finn & Jake played a holographic parody of “Magic: The Gathering” called “Card Wars.” Well, since this is the 21st century, someone went ahead and made a real version of the game so you, too, can play it! It is surprisingly fun, and the voice actors recorded a metric tonne of lines for it. It does a surprisingly good job of capturing the feel and rules of the game as played in the episode. Cons: it’s not free, and it’s micro-transaction based, so unless you’re willing to pony up the cash it’ll take you a long time to build up a powerful deck. Also, there’s no multiplayer, which seems weird since the episode was about a two-player card game. Oh, well. FLOOP THE PIG!

Tuesday night I went up to Three Ninjas’s Album Release Party for his newest album, Alcohol & Isolation. His opening act was the folk punk one-man dynamo, Joshua Stephens.

As is my way when it comes to music shows, I made some animated .GIFs of the festivities. Partake and enjoy!

I’ve made many an animated .GIF in my time. ‘Tis true! Look at ’em all!