Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Nerd Man of the Month: Jonathan Coulton


This month's Nerd Man describes himself as a "musician, singer-songwriter and internet superstar." That alone would have earned Jonathan Coulton at least 50 percent of the votes necessary to clinch the Nerd Man of the Month title. Couple that, though, with a personal recommendation from John Hodgman and the fact that he's a Contributing Troubadour for Popular Science and he becomes an obvious shoo-in.

If you've never heard Coulton's irresistable pop-ish, folk-ish, nerd-ish songs, have a listen at www.jonathancoulton.com. There, you can sample songs from his 52 songs in 52 weeks project or you can try something from the awesomely titled "Our Bodies, Ourselves, Our Cybernetic Arms." Peruse the song titles and you know any purchase is going to be well worth the price. You've got "Ikea." You've got "Re: Your Brains" in which a zombie plaintively asks his victim to open the door and acquiesce to a perfectly reasonable brain eating request. And you've got the popular favorite "Skullcrusher Mountain," which features these brilliant lyrics:

I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
But I get the feeling that you don’t like it
What’s with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, you like ponies
Maybe you don’t like monsters so much
Maybe I used too many monkeys
Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?


Seriously, who can resist that? Not the folks here at The Park Bench, that's for certain. And if you can't get enough of Jonathan "Mr. May" Coulton, don't forget to check out this very amusing interview with this "geek and postmodern digital pioneer" in Psychology Today. It's got a picture of Coulton AND his cat. Bonus!

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Jonathan Coulton is not only your Nerd Man of the Month (great choice, btw), but also Scanner's Crush of the Week!
Link: http://www.nerve.com/nerveblog/scannerblog.aspx?id=96e11418#11418

Just thought I had to share that two seemingly very different blogs found one happy medium in the awesome Jonathan Coulton. :)

Liz said...

Wow, that's so funny. I had no idea! I hope all this fame and fortune doesn't go to his head. :-)

Liz said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Liza said...

Hi First Time reader here;

April and May are both very fine choices for Nerd Man of the Month. After all, a woman's most erogenous zone is her.... brain!

If you ever need a fundraiser, you could do a calendar Nerd Men.

I took several yummy shots of Mr. May and their on the interweb for public consumption here.

Great blog - thanks!
^_^ Liza

Liz said...

Hey Liza, welcome to The Park Bench. It's nice to have you here! And thanks for the link to the great photos. I have high hopes of actually seeing a JoCo show one of these days myself.