My all-time favorite podcast, Revision3’s “The Totally Rad Show”, just celebrated its one year anniversary by producing one unbelievably good episode. And I’m not saying that just because I’m mentioned in it. Twice. (Yay for me!) If you’ve never seen it, the show centers around three late-20s/early-30s guys (Dan, Alex, and Jeff) chatting about movies, TV shows, video games, and comic books along with other geeky stuff. The fourth member of the team, Steve, is just as much a part of the show, even though he is off camera, because he’s the camera/post-production guy who tends to insert his own comments/observations as on-screen graphics during the show. One of the many incredibly creative things about the show is that each episode opens with the guys remaking a scene from a movie, TV show, video game, etc., but with their own unique spin.

In the current anniversary episode, they reveal the winning segments from their online poll and discuss what it was like shooting those particular fan faves. But I have to say that the opening alone is fantastic, especially if you’ve watched more than a few episodes. Basically throughout the year they have been singing a song (I won’t ruin it if you haven’t seen it yet) during the taping of each of the openings and compiled them all together into one amazingly cohesive segment. As a big fan, seeing that opening for the first time was (as I described to Keaven earlier today) like watching a twist in a movie that took a year to set up. EDIT: OK, so after another viewing I realized that the opening was actually created be re-shooting the earlier openings to make it look like they had been doing it all along. And, really, the fact that they had to get the clothes, props, backgrounds, etc. to match the original is pretty breathtaking in and of itself.

If you haven’t seen the show before, I’m not sure the anniversary episode is the right one to start with. On the one hand, it does focus on the fan favorites from the past year, but on the other hand, it contains a fair number of inside references, especially during the retrospective section. That being said [one of the inside references I mentioned] if you’re intrigued after watching this episode, I highly suggest you check out a couple more, particularly the London episode.

So here’s to another TRS-filled year. Keep the rad coming guys!

My brother David and I had a great time at the Jonathan Coulton show at the Birchmere on Friday, but we were a bit too far back to snap any pics or vids. So here are some links to vids that others took of the show. I’ll add clips to the list as I find them.

- During the opening act (Paul and Storm), JoCo came on stage to help them sing “Nugget Man” with a camera in his pocket. Also, bonus footage of the Birchmere’s green room!

- There was an e-mail request to do “Soft Rocked by Me” which turned into “Tequila Sunrise”, “Peaceful Easy Feeling”, “Hey Jude”, and very nearly “Come Sail Away”. I love this improv-stream-of-consciousness stuff.

- “Still Alive”, naturally…

- At the end of the show there were so many stuffed animals (and pony-monkey monsters) on stage that he decided to try making a “plush angel” but ended up just cuddling with the pile.

All in all it was a fantastic show, and the crowd made it that much better. In fact, JoCo and Paul and Storm twittered about our greatness. Yay!

PS- Sorry for the Variety-esque title. I wrote “joco show” and the rest practically wrote itself.

Update
A few more vids have been posted on YouTube:

- More complete version of “Soft Rocked by Me”. This one ends just before the video linked above begins, so start with this one to get the full effect.

- “Shop Vac”

- And Paul and Storm doing “The Captain Wife’s Lament” (NSFW-ish)

Also, Paul and Storm have posted on their website a video they made while killing time at the Birchmere which they have titled “Coultonfield”.

Jonathan Coulton is da man. There is a nice interview of this “geek rocker” on CNET TV from last week’s CNET Live with Tom Merritt where he talks about his music and even performs snippets of some of his more popular songs. Apparently, he was in San Francisco for a show where he performed “Still Alive”… on Rock Band with Leo Laporte, Veronica Belmont, and 43 Folders’s Merlin Mann. And he was on TWiT with all of the above (plus Engadget’s Ryan Block). While the TWiT episode was pretty much a JoCo love-fest, it still had some good info about Coulton’s business model in this “new age” of the music industry so I would highly recommend it, especially if you’re already a fan. Locally, he’s playing at the Birchmere on March 7. Awesome.

PS- This post’s title refers to my favorite non-Portal JoCo song “Re: Your Brains”.