DanielNester.com

Seven very strange Meatloaf-related clips: John Parr, A1 steak sauce, Brian May, Roger Daltrey, Megan Mullally.

2010-02-10T11:37:00.001-05:00

With Roger Daltrey.

With Brian "Is God" May, for an Olympic theme.

With John Parr, of "Naughty Naughty" and "St. Elmo's Fire" theme fame.

"Don't Forget The Lyrics" show with Patti Russo. Doing something.

Recording with Jennifer Hudson.

An A1 commercial.

With Megan Mullally.

Christian parody band's ApologetiX does "Freebird" parodeity with incredible drumstick guitar solo.

2010-02-09T12:13:00.002-05:00

Freebird done by the Apologetix

| MySpace Video
The solo starts at around 2:00. If you don't know about ApologetiX, "That Christian Parody Band," then you should read my piece on them at The Morning News. Karl Messner is working on a solo album. Here's hoping he does a drumstick solo when he plays live.

Test number two -- disregard if fed to Twitter.com.

2010-02-09T10:29:00.002-05:00

Here are 37 covers of Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love."

2010-02-08T10:04:00.000-05:00

More brillian Elvis karaoke shots from London.

2010-02-07T11:08:00.001-05:00

Elvis Karaoke, originally uploaded by Herschell Hershey.

Paul Elvis Chan, proprietor of the sadly defunct Gracelands Palace Chinese restaurant, Old Kent Road, London.

2010-02-07T11:04:00.001-05:00

Paul Elvis Chan, originally uploaded by Herschell Hershey.

Four versions of "Another One Bites The Dust"'s backwards masking (i.e., "It's Fun to Smoke Marijuana").

2010-02-05T11:05:00.000-05:00

The whole song.

Another whole song.

Here's 11 versions of Foreigner's "Dirty White Boy."

2010-02-05T10:51:00.000-05:00

Not one, but two Marilyn McCoo and Cliff Richard duets on Solid Gold.

2010-02-04T10:04:00.000-05:00

Crosby, Stills, and Nash present the 1977 Grammy album of the year to Fleetwood Mac.

2010-02-03T11:05:00.000-05:00

Check out all the nominees.

How to Be Inappropriate round-up: New Yorker, Salinger, monkeys, Quimby's, Chronogram,

2010-02-02T11:37:00.008-05:00

The New Yorker blog reports on the Literary Death Match at the Bowery Poetry Club from a few weeks back. Another write-up from LDM's own site here.

Why did I stay in New York? Well, because I got married, for one. That, and the friends. At least for awhile.

For all you J.D. Salinger fans, here's a blast from the past, from La Petite Zine: "My Ass Life in The West: The Catcher Transcripts," which appear in extended form in How to Be Inappropriate. And that was the inspiration for one book cover mock-up, right.

As part of its short takes review section, Chronogram calls How to Be Inappropriate "dryly hilarious."

A monkey poetry blog sorta likes my poetry book.

A photo of me hugging the book in Quimby's in Chicago turned up on their blog. J'adore Quimby's.

Here's a tweet: "One participant created his own two-boner box, and checked it himself." I can't stop chuckling at How to be Inappropriate."

Jeg vil på det varmeste anbefale boken "how to be inappropriate" av Daniel Nester. Do you know what that means? It's Norwegian for "I would most warmly recommend the book "How to be inappropriate" by Daniel Nester." Yeah.

And for all you people in England, English people, residents of the U.K., you will be able to buy How to Be Inappropriate in March.

Bill Labov discusses the Northern Cities Vowel Shift in American English.

2010-02-02T11:25:00.002-05:00

Marilyn McCoo, Billy Davis, Jr. sing off the nominees for 1976 Grammy song of the year.

2010-02-02T09:28:00.002-05:00

Here's a question, Beach Boy fanatics: Did you know this member of the band wrote the winning song? I sure didn't!

Gladys Knight, Pips sing off the nominees for 1975 Grammy song of the year.

2010-02-02T08:23:00.001-05:00

Karaoke + Poetry = Fun finally comes to Albany on February 20.

2010-02-01T12:43:00.001-05:00

That's right. Karaoke. Poetry. Fun. After the festivities of Frequency North presenting Capital LIT: CLMP's First Ever Albany Lit Fest, Karoake + Poetry = Fun will make its own Albany debut at Valentine's Music Hall and Beer Joint.

It all goes down on February 20. KPF will feature several local literary singing-types staring off the evening:

Murrow, Mary Panza, Eric Auld, Cara Benson, Geof Huth, Tobias Seamon, Alifair Skebe, Dan Wilcox, R.M. Englehardt

These are poets and writers who have quite bravely committed to taking part in this poetic thought experiment. Come by and sign up yourself and take part in the KPF experience--you shan't be disappointed.

Mark your calendars, go check out the CLMP fest, and then sing at read at Valentine's!

Report: BBC's Charlie Brooker's hilarious meta-satire reports how lame TV report segments are.

2010-01-30T10:38:00.000-05:00

From my teaching blog: vocal warm-ups and tongue twisters.

2010-01-29T16:59:00.002-05:00

Handout Vocal Warmups

View more presentations from Daniel Nester.

Tactlessgrace's vlog entry on How to Be Inappropriate, mooning, Catcher in the Rye ESL transcripts.

2010-01-29T11:11:00.000-05:00

Check this out. I don't know how I came across this. This woman, "tactlessgrace," gives a little talk on her life and the book. She seems to be drawn to the cover and the finger wiener, the mooning section, and the Catcher in the Rye ESL transcripts. I so want to send her a whoopee cushion.

The It's My Two Cents column returns on the Pank blog.

2010-01-29T10:34:00.000-05:00

And I'm back on the Pank blog with It's My Two Cents.

Here is a picture of me from 1990 entering a party that featured a four-foot-long bong.

2010-01-28T16:27:00.002-05:00

8_Camden-26, originally uploaded by visualstimuliphotog.

I wore my glasses a lot more often than I remember. As well as rocking a beard.

If you want to see the bong in question, just click through on the photo. And yes, I think I tried it.

Six Joan Armatrading videos that everyone should probably see.

2010-01-28T11:46:00.001-05:00

Mandy Moore covers Joan Armatrading? Might she be cool?

I had to put this up. At first when I saw the title of the video I was all like, "oh cool--Melissa Etheridge covers Joan Armatrading, I'll check it out." But then you look at the clip, and it's this shirtless dude with a hairy chest doing a very Catholic church singer-type cover. An instant classic. Beyond my wildest dreams.

There's so many homemade videos to this late Joan Armatrading song, originally made for her first greatest hits-type album Track Record. It's a strange mix of Joan songs on the YouTube--no "I Love It When You Call Me Names" or "All The Way From America." But slightly erotic and homoerotic homemade videos of "Weakness in Me"? YouTube has got that in spades.

Here's a Queen song called "Don't Lose Your Head." It's from A Kind of Magic album, which at least at first was going to be the full-on soundtrack to the Highlander movie.

(Get it? Don't lose your head? Swords? Be-heading?)

Anyway, I never really got the full explanation for this, but none other than Joan Armatrading is on spoken back-up vocals. She just says "Don't lose your head" every once in awhile. Further evidence Joan Armatrading is the coolest.

Did Steve Almond ever listen to this cover of Toto's "Africa"?

2010-01-27T13:21:00.000-05:00

I don't think so.

How to Be Inappropriate round-up: Girl, Strange, Urban Outfitters, and 817.6 N4683.ho.

2010-01-26T18:10:00.001-05:00

Some girl's got it down already.

HTBI made The 10 Strangest Books You Can Buy on Amazon.

You can still buy HTBI at Urban Outfitters. Which still freaks me out.

817.6 N4683.ho. That's the call number of How to Be Inappropriate in at least one library. It's been added to the bookshelves of the University of Virginia library, Skokie, Illinois, and some place in San Francisco.

Trying to rock out to "Bohemian Rhapsody" a la Wayne's World in your parked car FAIL.

2010-01-26T11:21:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Ernest Hilbert and E-Verse for this one.

A website asked me, "What am I reading?" And here was my answer.

2010-01-25T16:29:00.000-05:00

Campaign for the American Reader and its sister site Writers Read asked me to send along to them some details on the books I've been reading.

I sent them a list of books I just finished and have been reading: Michael Martone, a 33 1/3 series book on Celine Dion, Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, Nick Flynn, Kathleen Rooney, Eliseo Vivas.

Check out my entry, sure, but check out the archives--there are entries tens, hundreds of writers, from Marilyn Chin, Laura van den Berg, John Koethe, Abraham Verghese.