Spandex, Singing Fruit, Loaded, Leather, Moonroof

I discovered (or remembered) some stuff on youtube that I wanted to share. It all started with my last post. The youtube video for that one was entitled Spandex Commuter VS Electric Bike. Well, you know how youtube links to "related" videos you can look at after the one you chose to see? Well thanks to "Spandex" being in my title, I looked at "Mr Scruff - Spandex Man" after playing my video:

OK, not a lot to that one, I know. But after playing it, there was a link to this other "Mr Scruff" related item that I liked very much:

There were tons of "Mr Scruff" videos, from all kinds of different "authors". Turns out Mr Scruff is a prolific British DJ and artist. The singing fruit Mr Scruff video made me think about youtube and how much I like music at the same time, which resulted in my looking for some video of Don Ross, a mind-blowing guitarist that I had the great pleasure of seeing live about 5 months ago. The following will hold almost no interest for some of my readers. For those who play the guitar, however, it has the same kind of effect on them as that Danny MacAskill video has on cyclists.

It is insane that the only guitar you are hearing in that piece is his. Just one. Gah. Don Ross doesn't look like that any more, by the way. Most of that hair is gone. On stage he said young youtube commenters were telling him he looked like Hagrid from Harry Potter, so he thought it was time for a new look.

Anyway, I thought I would share, because this blog is at least in part a method of sharing stuff that most of my everyday local friends may not find interesting. There's always a like-minded freak who'll agree with me on the good old Internet. Not that you are a freak. I mean all the other freaks that come here. Not that everybody who comes here is a freak... I love that people come here to read my stuff. Even those freaks, the ones that aren't you.

Keep it Freaky,

R A N T W I C K

PS - In the interest of full disclosure, yes, I did watch that other spandex video of the woman in the green jump suit, and the one with the bobsledder splitting her spandex pants. Sometimes youtube is like a car crash... I know I shouldn't look, but I cannot tear my eyes away. We shall not speak of these things again.

Losing My Identity Rocks!

Over the past few days I've been intentionally slipping on maintaining my anonymity. It all started with my Movember fundraising efforts. Then I signed up for the evil facebook using my real name to promote that event to my friends. So, after about a year of actively hiding my name from everybody, it is now pretty findable for anyone who cares to know it. Since I really like my little squinty-eyed alter-ego, I have every intention of continuing to publish this blog as RANTWICK and to keep pictures of my ugly mug off the Internet as much as possible.

One nice thing about loosening up a bit is that I can now engage in shameless self promotion of new kinds! I play and sing in an Acoustic Guitar Duo called Dog's Breakfast here in London Ontario:

I am the dog on the left. We're playing at the London Music Club on Friday (the 13th!) night. The half-dozen or so gigs we've had so far have been a blast, so if you want to come have a beer (or ten) and a listen, click here for more details. It would be super fun to meet one of my local readers in person, unless of course you feel compelled to inform me that the music sucks. In that case please just slip on out of there and leave me alone in my musical fantasy world.

Yer Pal,

R A N T W I C K