Tom Smith, the World’s Fastest Filker, tore his left quad tendon the other day, and as I understand it, doesn’t have much in the way of insurance. He has a Virtual Guitar Case that’s been set up on his site for a while: if you can, go over and drop something in. Even better, order his CDs. I especially recommend the downloads for Homecoming: Marcon 2005 and Live at GAFilk: those may have been the best $9.98 I ever spent.
Tom Smith has been releasing a new song every week or so over on Blogspot, with decent-quality download for free, and high-quality for $0.99. His latest, “Dervish“, is an amazing piece inspired by Guild Wars, which I may need to check out now on the strength of the song.
I strongly recommend “Take Your Hands Off the Bear“, a magical story about a breakup, “A Pirate Christmas” (”We three kings of Orient ARRRR!”), and “Hey, It’s Can(n)on“, the (un)fortunate result of noticing that Hermione Granger’s birthday happens to fall on Talk Like A Pirate Day.
I’ve mentioned Tom Smith’s Jim Henson tribute song, “A Boy and His Frog”, before. The other day, I was searching YouTube for Sesame Street videos, as Erin read the lyrics in Sesame Street Unpaved, when I came across a video that did a wonderful job of matching the song.
I think the part that hit hardest was as Tom sang, “And though not quite in your voice, I’ll say…” as a scene from The Muppet Christmas Carol played. :-(
And once again, Tom Smith hits one out of the park…
Tom Smith was feeling depressed because he felt like no more than a court jester.
Then he got this letter from a fan.
Happy sailing, guy. :-)
Last weekend, the Pegasus Award winners were announced at the Ohio Valley Filk Fest. I was pleased to see that Tom Smith, the subject of one of my earliest posts, had won the award for best writer/composer. He also won Best Filk Song for “Rocket Ride”, in which he laments the current state of SF movies and wishes for:
A hero, not a weapons shop with pecs,
A heroine, not an excuse for sex….
I want to cruise the galaxy at FTL,
Pursuing Heaven and defying Hell,
I want to do everything that a man can do,
And I want to do it all out there with you!
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,
Nothing worth doing that I haven’t tried.
There ain’t no living on planet-side,
Come on with me, baby, on a rocket ride.
Gee, I wonder why my referrer log is full of Google searches for “A Boy and His Frog“….
I’ve mentioned Tom Smith’s “A Boy and his Frog” before. Last year, John C. Bunnell rewrote it in honor of the Columbia.
I still mourn the passing of Jim Henson. When I heard the news of his death, I did a MacDraw picture of Kermit with an “RIP, Jim” note and put it up on the big screen in the Mac classroom at Brown. (Do they still have Macs in there, or did they cave?) Steve Whitmire makes an admirable attempt, but nobody else is _really_ Kermit.
Tom Smith apparently feels much the same way.
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Some material on this site is intended for a mature audience. Deal.
Update: I linked to this using BlogThis. This was the description from the website at the time: it should be obvious from later posts why I linked to Tom. :-)
