The Lex Files

“There Was This Guy” — A Pop Epic

Sometimes, I have too much time on my hands. Specifically, lazy weekends when Lauren is out for a few hours without me.

Occasionally, during one of those “too much time” periods, I am able to create magic. This, of course, happened recently.

I wrote and recorded, in less than one hour, an amazing new Lex Friedman original tune. It’s called “There Was This Guy,” and I don’t believe I am exaggerating when I say it is the greatest song ever recorded in all history, and its greatness will never be matched or exceeded in the future, either.

Okay, that’s a lie. But it made me smile:

There Was This Guy, by Lex Friedman.

You can find plenty of songs for children on the web along with other kinds of music. If you aren’t looking for music though, and some coloring pages would be better for your arts and crafts minded child then you can also find plenty of free coloring books online.

The funniest headline of the week

Katie Couric is leaving the Today show to host the CBS evening news. Meredith Viera is leaving The View to take over for Katie. And today, Extra reports that Rosie O’Donnell is returning to television, replacing Meredith on The View.

Defamer, ever-reliable, has the funniest headline of the week with their coverage of this story:

“We’re gonna need a bigger couch.”*

That’s funny!

• For the woefully non-movie-savvy amongst you, that’s comparing Rosie to a giant killer shark in Jaws.

Do you believe in magic?

David Copperfield isn’t my favorite magician. (That distinction goes to a duo — Penn & Teller.)

Dave did, however, go up two notches on my coolness scale today.

Davey was mugged, at gunpoint. His assistants handed over their cash right away. Here’s what happened next:

Copperfield said he pulled out all of his pockets for Riley to see he had nothing - even though he had a cell phone, passport and wallet stuffed in them. “Call it reverse pick-pocketing,” Copperfield said.

Read the whole article.

Awesome… and decidedly less awesome

Back when I worked for Grab.com, there was one project I spearheaded after the idea came to me during, of all things, Yom Kippur services. For those who don’t know, YK is the most important holy day on the Jewish calendar.

Several times in the English text, God was referred to as “awesome.” This somehow triggered my mind to think about my (over-)use of the word to describe things that are cool, neat-o, or nifty. My mind somehow then jumped to a website, first sent to me by my friend Eli. The site was http://lex.friedman.youaremyfriend.com/. As you can imagine, any name can be substituted in.

And thus, with Awesomeness and YouAreMyFriend.com combining in my cranium, was Project Awesome born. Example: http://www.grab.com/awesome/Lex/Friedman.

Go ahead and check it out. Even if you’ve seen Project Awesome 100 times, go watch it for the hundred and first. With your speakers turned on.

I maintain that Project Awesome’s success (and it certainly had some) was more than 50% based on the music. The music, which wasn’t a key element of my Yom Kippurian brainstorm, seems to really take the humor of Awesome (such as it is) into overdrive. Particularly the anecdotally most-appreciated moment of whole thing: The sung word “forehead.”

That “forehead” is very popular.

And it almost didn’t exist. See, before I was re-inspired and wrote the Project Awesome theme we all now know and love (for which, by the way, the music was first recorded “live” in my bedroom studio, followed by my improvising the melody by playing the Flash animation while listening to the background music I’d improvised a few minutes prior, with the sung “forehead” at first a last-nanosecond decision that barely makes it on tempo)… Before I was inspired to write that jingle, I’d written and recorded a very different, instrumental backing tune.

So, in fact, the music now behind Project Awesome is known to Awesome scholars everywhere as “Project Awesome 2.” That’s because the original song, the first one I wrote for Project Awesome, gets to bear its name.

And here, hear. Now, be prepared for a shock — it’s different in tone, rhythm, and again — lacks lyrics. It would have been a miserable failure. Be glad we didn’t end up using it.

Listen to the original “Project Awesome.”

But he’s very affectionate

I started my new job this past Monday. The guy I share an office with likes to bark orders at various people who walk by us, and he tends to sit awfully close to me. He also demands attention on occasion at inopportune times, and mopes around if I’m not able to provide the attention desired at that moment.

I’m working from home, of course. And Charlie’s honestly a pleasure to spend the day with.

If your dog is your most affectionate partner in your life then you may be interested in a dating site where you can browse some personals and decide if the local dating scene might be for you from the comfort of home.

Babies and Bob, PJs and Passover, and Chocolate Eggs

Most of my blogging has been taking place over at The Baby Blog these days. Just this week, we lifted the lid on our best-kept secret, and now we’re closer to 13 weeks than 12!

Still, there are some exciting developments in other areas of life to report:

1. Today is my last day at my current job. More on this later.
2. In my final month there, among other things, I produced (with an artist and a game programmer, of course) a deliciously humorous web-game that you should play: Super Bob.
3. My parents, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law are all here in the condo for Passover. We had a kickin’ seder last night, and tonight’s — this is true — is pajama party style.
4. Our condo is for sale, because we’re moving to New Jersey in a few months. Want it?
5. I find this post about attempting to replace real eggs in a cake recipe with Cadbury chocolate eggs instead amusing. But it contains bad words.
6. There is no spoon.

It’s you and me and the bottle baby makes three tonight!

It’s been a closely-held secret until today, but now the proverbial cat is out of the less proverbial womb.  I am pleased — nay, thrilled! — to announce that my lovely bride Lauren is officially three months pregnant

 See for yourself at our other, shared blog: http://baby.thefriedmans.net/

Someone in Amazon’s email department is gasping for air.

[placeholder for winning team] Wins the NCAA Tournament! Dear Amazon.com Customer, Congratulations, [placeholder for winning team]! As someone who has purchased sports gear in our Fan Shop, we thought you should be the first to see our selection of NCAA championship products.

Whoops!

Guess who’s back?

Me!

I’ve been blogging over at Grab.com for awhile, but over time it’s been making more and more sense for me to maintain my real personal blog here.

I’ve — somehow! — gotten all my Grab blog posts into this blog, while keeping all the old posts from my original blog at this address, all while upgrading to Wordpress (from a homegrown blogging application that I had written previously).

Even more amazingly, I put together a solution so that old URLs for The Lex Files (http://www.thefriedmans.net/blog/archive/url-shortcut-here) will automagically redirect to their new home in the Wordpress hierarchy.

I’m so proud.

There are more layout and style changes to come, as well as a porting of all the old comments I can get my hands on from earlier incarnations of this blog. But we’re getting somewhere