{"id":324,"date":"2007-03-04T21:00:15","date_gmt":"2007-03-04T21:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/?p=324"},"modified":"2020-08-16T20:55:32","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T00:55:32","slug":"drone_monkey_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/?p=324","title":{"rendered":"Drone monkey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I had never heard of Jonathan Coulton until a week ago. Last Saturday, I went to a gathering of friends at the Sealys’ house, and when I arrived, several people were in the middle of listening to various tracks from Coulton’s song “Code Monkey”, which he had made available for download by people participating in last November’s “Code Monkey” remix contest<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn’t pay very much attention to all this during the actual gathering, but I was curious enough to look up the contest winners page<\/a> the next day and listen to the original song and the various remixes. The remixed versions didn’t impress me very much, but Coulton’s original version was instantly addictive, and I’ve been playing it repeatedly and singing it in my shower and my car ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, I was checking the webcomics<\/a> that I read every day, and saw these characters making a guest appearance in Freefall<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Hey, I recognize those robots! They’re drones from Silent Running<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Inevitably, I found myself reading the Wikipedia article<\/a> about that movie. In the article’s trivia section, I read that Silent Running<\/em> is “referred to heavily in John Hodgman’s compendium of fictional trivia, The Areas of My Expertise<\/em>.” Wait a minute — John Hodgman? Isn’t that the guy who plays a PC in those annoying Macintosh commercials<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, it is. And in the Wikipedia article about him<\/em>, I learned that he has collaborated on various projects with Jonathan Coulton. Yes, the Jonathan Coulton who recorded “Code Monkey”. The guy I had never heard of before a week ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is everyone else’s life as strange as this, or is it just me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UPDATE: Minutes after posting this entry, I read a review of The Astronaut Farmer<\/a><\/em> and learned that the cast of that movie includes Bruce Dern<\/a>, who played the lead in Silent Running<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ANOTHER UPDATE: I later discovered that the first sentence of this article is incorrect<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had never heard of Jonathan Coulton until a week ago.
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