Canon in D

Update: I actually illustrated my own point about the way in which an inspired YouTube video inspires imitation...the video I first posted was not in fact JerryC, but was funtwo covering JerryC. And Jerry's is better, though funtwo's is bloody good; plus Jerry's the guy who created the piece to being with. So now I'm leading with JerryC, and funtwo gets a link instead of an embed. Nothin' personal, funtwo, but Jerry earns the top bill.

Do you know the really nice thing, that makes me feel that I'm not a total 100% failure as a parent? The Princess likes classical music enough to be familiar with Pachelbel's Canon and therefore to appreciate what Jerry C. does with it here.

Man, I do like watching people who are freaky-good at something do their stuff. And this guy is just doing his chops in his dorm room...I love the internet and YouTube. No mute, inglorious Milton is this dude.

I especially like the variation in the minor introduced at about the 3:50 mark.



HT: I came across this by following Ace's sidebar link to Riehl World Vision's link to funtwo's cover of Jerry's piece -- which is first-rate in its own right, and which was actually what I originally posted before realizing funtwo and JerryC weren't the same guy.

While we're here and mentioning the Princess, we might as well bring up the copyright-violating but who the heck cares (copyright laws in the U.S. are in drastic need of revision; and art forms like this one, and the ensuing persecution of YouTube by the media giants, is a perfect example of why the whole intellectual-property legal landscape needs a 7.0-Richter-scale shakeup)...ahem, sorry, what was my point? Oh, yes, the Princess, along with approximately a Brazilian teenagers world wide, loves the following parody video in which The Lord of the Rings is mined for comic relief and for the satisfaction of Erwin Beekveld's creative urge. This whole genre of faux trailers and subversively parodic use of iconic pop-culture images is something that has never been possible before -- and we are societally the richer for it, while the entertainment industry is not harmed in the slightest. And there's another stage of creative chaos that follows on this one...but first, because you'll need the point of reference, spend two minutes and nine seconds watching the now-classic "They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard."



But now -- and this is what I think is so very cool -- once "They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard" becomes a huge viral-video hit, it becomes part of the pop culture landscape in its own right, and teenagers throughout the world can be confident that their peers not only know all about The Lord of the Rings, but that their peers have all seen and enjoyed "Isengard." Which makes it possible to parody the parody. All the world's a stage, but if you've got the creativity, your bedroom can become all of Middle-Earth, complete with mountain ridges suitable for manly long-shot running scenes.



And note, I liked these guys' amateurish version just because I like to see kids having harmless and creative fun -- but there have to be forty or fifty different reworkings of the "Isengard" video...anime versions, a World of Warcraft version, a (very poorly executed, alas) Star Wars version in which Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson express their views on the hobbits destination (hint: they seem to think the hobbits are being taken to Isengard), a Little Rascals takeoff (for those of us old enough to remember Little Rascals reruns)...

I love the internet.

P.S. Oh, and for those of you who didn't catch the blonde-joke "Brazilian" allusion:

GUY IN BAR [reacting in shock to a headline in the paper he's perusing]: Ah, man, this is just awful. It says here that seven Brazilian skiers were killed yesterday in an avalanche.

BLONDE SITTING TWO STOOLS DOWN: Oh my Gawd! How many is a brazilian?