Hippity Hop

Over the summer, I did lots of stuff, among which was recording an album with the Woodbums, recording my solo album, and starting piano lessons. Now I am starting to learn guitar at school as well, so I am well on my way to being an effective one-man band. My album is called Verbally Busted Skills, and it is unimpressive. However, the album recorded with my cousins, Pennskillvania, was more professionally done (and delicious). Also, I have already written half of my next album, Accidental Kleptomania. It will be much better, because I'll record it with a real microphone (always a plus). To provide a little tickle of a teaser for it, I present to to you three of the track titles:
"SR"
"Hard Out Here for a Pimp (But Easy for a Ho)"
"Lunch!"

Later.

Promises

I've made a lot of promises to myself and others, and haven't followed through on many of them. This is not one of those promises: "I promise to blog not only tonight, but also more frequently than I have been, in light of the fact that Yogipie was neglected throughout the months of June, July, August, and September." That is a new record in this blog's history! I will probably have to make several posts tonight, given that I've been away from "the sphere" for so long. See ya.

SUMMER!

HA! It is summer and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it! I can do whatever I want now! I have no obligations! I just played a ten-minute Brawl against a team of three Level 6 computer players and won, 7 to -7! So yeah! Summer vacation is going to be AWESOME, even though my high school Spanish teacher already gave me homework! UGH! Some people! I am going to bury my yearbook! And buy a purple sweatshirt!

-Yogipie

BOO-YAH!

Some Stuff

As chief publication of the counterculture, it is Yogipie's job to inform you that Rush are coming back into style, so if you are unfamilar with that band, I recommend you pick up Moving Pictures. It contains the song " Tom Sawyer," which I listened to on repeat for about five hours on end while I finalized my homework project based on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. That was quite fun, and the best part is that the song never got old; Neil Peart's drumming is just that delicious.
Also, if you're not already familiar with it from the newspaper comics page, I would check out the comic strip Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis. I recently got a book of it. The guy is a genius. It's amazing that even though he Pastis is actually a Santa Rosan, we did not actually get his strip in our paper until very recently. He said that until then, his neighbors had not believed him when he told them he did a comic strip. Anyway, it is funny stuff.

Summer Is Almost Here!

I stayed up past my tiredness threshold last night, meaning I was tired, but I stayed up so late it went away and I couldn't get to sleep. Anyways, I used to write and draw a lot, but recently I have done these less and less. However, last night I wrote a "composition," continued a story that I must have started at least a year ago and that is itself the sequel to one I wrote near the end of sixth grade in the free time I had during state testing, and drawn a patakume, which is an art form I created a while back, if you could call it that, consisting of an extremely active battle scene drawn in one color on the back of an 8 1/2" by 11" sheet of paper, involving up to four sides battling for dominance of the sheet, sometimes including God as one of those. I dug up an old patakume I drew; here is a scan of it (feel free to laugh, but keep in mind that I was twelve years old). The quality of the art is not how you judge it, but rather on the amount of things simultaneously going on. If you count which units live and die on which sides, you can tell who is going to win the battle. Last night, the USA and the JFAA (Japanese Federation of Anti-Americans) ended with an equal number of troops, but since the invaders, the Japanese, suffered more casualties, I think it is safe to say the Americans won. I will post again after dinner if I can.

Groovy RG Bug and Progressive Music

My only adventures in photography that have not yet been published on my blog are about to be now. There was a groovy red and green bug chilling on my "Sport Court," so I busted out the camera and took a couple of pictures.

Yeah, they are pretty nice, and don't try to tell me otherwise, because I simply will not hear you.

I bought an album today called Spontaneous Combustion, by Liquid Trio Experiment, who are the abridged version of Liquid Tension Experiment that recorded an improvised album while their guitarist was busy. It is awesome prog music. Moreover, I am love with the album art. The strange thing is I also listen to Hiromi, a trio of the same ingredients who recently added a permanent guitarist to the mix. And they both have bassists named Tony. Coincidence? I think not.

My mom totally does not get prog. Every time the band do something rhythmically interesting, she thinks they messed up...

Mike Portnoy may be a better drummer than me (by a little bit [HA! Damn, I'm funny.]), but if one looks at the liner notes to Combustion, one sees I can spell better than him ("existance?"). Anyways... Until next time!

BRAWL

One of the presents I got for my birthday this year was Super Smash Bros. Brawl. After I played that game, I never wanted to play any other. One of the most unique things about it is that it allows one to have a good thirty minutes of friendly conversation with a complete stranger. It's an amazing game, so humor me if I have to talk about, you know, the nerd stuff involved. My favorite character is, without a doubt, Kirby. Not only does he have powerful attacks but he also has useful abilities like his ground pound and copy moves, as well as the ability to midair jump five times and a highly effective Final Smash. I think he is worse in Brawl than in Melee, if only for looks, because his strong attack, which used to be a charging fireball, now involves him spinning on his head. Oh, well. I can still win all sorts of tourneys using him. My username is V.B.S which is, of course, lucky, and I always use one of his lucky colors: red, green, or white. Don't ask me why, but if I am one of the other colors, I can't win. I hardly play as any other character, and for that matter, neither does anyone else in my family. That is why, when you look at my Brawl stats, the character who hold all the records is Kirby. In fact, when I've looked at the personal stats of the V.B.S profile, I don't even have a least played character, because there are so many fighters whom I have only played once since March 11th. At least now there are none whom I have not played at all. I love the new features that have been added since Melee, like the Masterpieces collection, the Final Smashes, the All-Star Mode, the Challenges, Subspace Emissary, and, not to be forgotten, the vastly improved Home-Run Contest, on which I have hit over 1800 feet with Captain Olimar, who is one of my least favorite characters, by the way. I could talk for pages upon pages more about what I love about Brawl, but I am sure I would only bore you, if I haven't already.

Music

What I've been listening to of late consists mostly of the following: Abdominal, The Raconteurs, Parliament, Black Mountain, and myself. I am a shallow narcissistic fiend. But I am just so good.

Hello World.

Surprisingly enough, I didn't find time to post again yesterday, for I was watching Dude, Where's My Car?. However, today I have plenty of time... I'd like to go into more detail about my counterculture thing. There are six cultural universals involved, and I think most people are already into four of them: chillin, music, slang, social networking (both analog and digital), education, and charity. Que interesante! It should be fun to get people into this stuff over the summer. Join me!

pastpresentfuture

Man! These posts will just keep being huge if I keep skipping three months in between them. I will probably post almost every day in the summer, though; I'll be really bored. Lots to talk about today... let's see. Well, I discovered Virtual DJ software which is quite fun, but on the downside I have only got a trial version which will run out in 16 days, and the songs I create with it can't be shared on Soundclick because they contain samples of other people's songs. I can assure you, however, that they sound awesome. Speaking of summer, I've got big plans for mine, a trip to Europe (maybe), finishing my album, which I've decided I will call Verbally Busted Skills, establishing a counterculture among my peers, buying lots of new music (I still have some new albums I haven't yet listened to, but I suppose I'll have plenty of time to listen to music), and chilling. I have a Facebook profile now, so if you want you can be my friend. I recorded some videos and an album with my band Overlode, a few songs of whom appear on our SoundClick page, one song featuring Vanilla Bean Speck. That song was especially fun to create. I have also recorded "solo" music on Magic GarageBand, the best one being my slow blues song, "My Woman Is Gone." It's all awful though. I've written lyrics for my entire VBS album now, and am recording a song with my cousin Bredd Loaf over email. I've been doing an "ISearch" research project, which I believe is a requirement for 8th-Graders. It's the most fun and the only useful thing we've done in Core class all year. My topic is the history of piano technology, which is way more interesting than it sounds. There's a great book about it, where I got most of my information. Other people had more inspired topics though. Did you know that the guy who invented the piano made so little money off of it that he went back to making harpsichords? There's also an interview involved, which I've already done, but it's a real pain to transcribe. Well, that's all for now, but I will probably post again today.

Vanilla Bean Speck album

I've written lyrics for at least ten songs of my album, but without GarageBand, I don't know where to begin on recording. On the upside I guess it gives me more time to work on lyrics. I might try to record one completely freestyle, which would be liberating but extremely difficult. And speaking of title, I was thinking, and I decided on Hi Rider, coupled with a cover image of me wearing my pants up to my chest. Pretty hilarious eh? Anyways, I've been writing a lot (by my standards), not only rap but also blues lyrics, limericks, and an absolutely pitiful attempt at prose, after which I gave up trying to voluntarily write prose ever again.

Shoebox Blog

The Shoebox Blog is amazing! Go there now, and read hilarious stuff, like comics, lists, and "newsdroppings!

Oddball Comment

Whoever posted the oddball comment on my blog was right. I should wear lighter colors. I should also stuff my posts full of unnecessary links like this one. On the other hand, maybe true artists wouldn't agree with that shameless selling out. No matter. I'm still "Feelin' Groovy," just like yesterday. I've noticed that when my morale is high there's little to write about. I am no longer ill. I am at peace with the world, and as far as I know the world is at peace with me. I've lost the battle. Follow all the links; you just might learn something.

Feelin' Groovy

Stuff is cool: double three-day weekends, Dr. Pepper, Dream Theater, doing nothing, writing poetry, ripping off rhyme schemes from other people, playing Risk, chilling, going outside, enjoying life... my morale is high. I'm recovering from illness; it is a "Feelin' Groovy" kind of day!

BRISTOL

I've been interested in the English city of Bristol for some time now. I'm going there in the summer. One thing I've noticed is there are lots of awesome bands from the area, like Portishead and Massive Attack. And Blackbeard was also from Bristol. And they're still rebuilding from the time they got bombed by Nazis. Anyway, I'm going to go there and it's going to be awesome... Incidentally I might also go to Pennsylvania. More on this later.

Vanilla Bean Speck solo

I wrote a pretty sick rap song. Unfortunately I have no way to record it for the time being, and no beat to work on... I can tell you, though, it has one of the best lines ever written: "My verses got the curses to put you in the hearses." Enough said. When I do record it I will be sure to release it on SoundClick, and provide the readers of Yogipie with a link.

More Quotes

You know how much I love quotes, so here are some more classics.

"My father told me never kill anything you're not going to eat. At the age of 9, I shot a porcupine. It was the toughest lesson I ever had."- Ernest Hemingway

"I'm the greatest"- John Lennon

"The next best thing to being clever is being able to quote someone who is"- Mary Pettibone Poole

I hope you enjoyed them...
In other news, my vacation's almost over.

NEW YEAR, NEW POST

Let's get to the point. I should have posted on Christmas Day and on New Year's Eve, but today should be good enough. You're wondering what I got for Christmas; I can tell. Revolver(awesome!), Maroon, new drumsticks, new drum head, new drum bag, candies, The Beatles: Illustrated Lyrics, and a cookbook. Cool, huh?
My new year's revolutions (Yes, revolutions): I plan to release a full Vanilla Bean Speck solo album. Yeah. And I'm going to, you know, improve humanity and such... and I'd like to write a rock song about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, or commission such a song, before it's too late. Such an inspirational woman. And yet, I still struggle to write like, anything... Happy 2008!

SoundClick Music

I mentioned a rap song in my last post: it's called "Verbally Busted Skills" and you can find it here on my SoundClick Music page: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=779372&content=music. There might also be a rap of "Take Me Out To the Ball Game," but don't get your hopes up.

September 5... Wow.

It's been nearly 3 months since I last wrote a blog entry. I've had lots of interesting experiences, and they respectively involve iambic tetrameter, rapping, ancestry, McDonald's, Thanksgiving (duh), Indonesia, college people, getting a new view on an old favorite band, video games, and lots of movies (I know that before I stopped blogging I had made it a habit to review every movie I saw, but right now I don't think I have the endurance [or the proper time window {my dad is oppressive on school nights}] to blog all that, and plus my memory on the last three months is incomplete, so only the most recent events will be the most blogged-about topics). ROSA
Don't you hate it when people say "parenthese?" That is a bit off the topic of this particular historical-type blog post, but I nonetheless consider it important, because it hella bugs me (apparently we only use that slang here in California). So, just for your information, in case you didn't know already, the real singular form of "parenthesis" is simply "parenthesis."
I was assigned to write an Anne Bradstreet-style (what a Puritan!) poem, thirty lines long or more, about a traumatic incident that happened in my life that gave me a profound insight on human nature or life or something of that sort. It was to be in rhyming couplets, in iambic tetrameter, a poetic rhythm with eight syllables per line and the accent on the even syllables. I present my poem to you here, in its original, unedited, as-turned-in version. Enjoy.

I Bizzust Mad Rhizzymes Like a Pizzuritan

Upon a day filled with good cheer,
For being that great time of year,
I started ‘cause I had forgot
The forecasts were less and less hot
That summer was now near its close
Thus gone were all the summer clothes,
And so mid-August drew quite near
I tried to hide away in fear
Of a new year of middle school
That loomed before me calm and cool
Forgot were essays of all manners
Forgotten were those silly planners,
All thoughts of grammar, and the ban
On all deod’rant in a can
My mind eliminated all
Of education great and small:
Circumference, diameter,
And iambic tetrameter
But now I rhyme like Puritans
The words are now all slurred in,
Because the new year has begun,
And though it may not be so fun,
I’ve learned a lot, and so have you,
Like algebra and science too
During the summer (this is why
To middle school returned was I),
I spoke no Spanish, nor read lit,
Nor at my table learned a bit,
So back I went, on a carpool
To Santa Rosa Middle School
To stuff my brain with odds and ends
And in high school begin again

Come on. You know that was cool. I may not have fully fulfilled the requirements of the assignment (i.e. traumatizing), but I immensely enjoyed writing it. The reason for the slight poetic license in word pronunciation is that Anne Bradstreet used similar devices and therefore it is hilarious. The reason I went for thirty-two lines was because it's a power of 2. And really, who can resist such a thing, especially when one finds it just an eensy bit above the minimum requirement.

So, on the topic of Syrup Suicide, no progress has been made whatsoever in the past 3 months... Jujube Jones, it turns out, was only joining as a joke, so we are now five (more efficient). I suppose I did record one short (1:31) song that I had written a while ago, but being the selfish egomaniac that I am, I credited it to Vanilla Bean Speck only.
My ancestry, for some reason, became exceptionally important to me, and I did nothing but go backward and backward in time for quite a while. There were two points where I did reach fifteenth-century England, but one was on step. I can trace my roots to Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Ireland, and England. It's awesome! I went back like 14 generations!

So recently my dad and I went to a McDonald's, and it was awful. You see, the price of our food seemed high, so my dad asked the guy doing the drive-thru about it, and he had no clue. So that guy called in a superior, and they talked about the situation. His superior then turned to us and told us that if we got large drinks instead of medium, it would be cheaper for us. Apparently, under the combo system, the combos are economic, but if the meal is incompatible, such as a large McNuggets and a medium drink, it is less economic than the large combo. We were like, "What the hell?" but we went for the cheaper option. Those nuggets made me puke later; It was obviously a curse.

I ate my Thanksgiving dinner in the remote ghost town of Saratoga, CA. It was delicious. That is not very substantial coverage of something that wasn't very substantial to begin with (unless you're talking about the increase in my weight), but I felt it had to be said so I could use the extreme hypobole of "remote ghost town" to describe a town that is really not such.

On November 16th and 17th, I fasted for thirty hours to raise money for starving people in Indonesia. It was with an organization called World Vision, and it was held in the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Rosa. If you're ever not busy around that time of year, come by and be heroic like me (Did I mention I was a selfish egomaniac?).

My sister Terri and my cousin Kris came to stay here over Thanksgiving Break. I played all sorts of games with them, went to see movies and stuff. It was great fun. Kris turned me on to the greatest Beatles album, which I think brings us to our next topic, doesn't it?

Abbey Road is totally the best Beatles album. I've listened to the entire thing probably ten times now. I got it on the 25th, and it's been in heavy rotation on my iPod since. Favorite songs include "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," "Here Comes the Sun," "Polythene Pam," and "Her Majesty." But the entire album is amazing; it's like they're just continuously playing as opposed to separately recording each track. AWESOME.

My brother and I have spent a lot of time playing 1080 Avalanche for GameCube. That game is really amazing. The levels are incredibly well-designed, with multiple tiers and clever shortcuts. I bet no one reading this could beat the times of 48.61 s for Tenderfoot Pass and 50.83 for Frosty Shadows... Huh? Yeah, I didn't think so.

I saw lots of movies. So, how did you like that summary of the last 85 days? I'd say they were pretty good.