I’ll be playing a couple (literally 2) Hanukkah and Jewish songs at the Chicago Cultural Center with Adam Davis and perhaps some others, which is kind of weird since Hanukkah is over, but, well, ’tis the season, I suppose.  We’ll be in the cafe area.

At some point in my life I became a minimalist as far as the word “Hanukah” was concerned: No “C” one “N” and one “K.” Simple. Elegant. And, as far as I knew, an approved spelling. But now that Firefox has built-in spell checking, I’m told that “Hanukah” is actually misspelled. “Hanukkah” is the only approved spelling. “Chanukah?” Misspelled. “Hannukkah?” Misspelled. “Grabjorblart?” Misspelled.

As a result, I’ve actually changed my behavior. I hate those dotted red underlines so much that I now spell Hanukkah with two k’s. Happy 8th night of Hanukkah everyone! Take it away, LeeVees:

I’ll be playing mandolin on a couple songs with Divebar this Friday at Fitzgeralds. From my brother and Divebar keyboardist: “For those of you who haven’t been there, Fitzgerald’s is a very cool place, has great sound and weird stuff on the walls. Despite being located in Berwyn, it’s actually very easy to get to and has ample street parking. So, how ’bout it? We’ll probably even throw in a holiday song or two. Hope to see you there.”

DIVEBAR w/ Braam and the Orphans
Show starts at 9:30 — Divebar at 10:30

For more info, see: www.fitzgeraldsnightclub.com
And: www.divebarmusic.com

The album’s done and will be on sale soon, but in the meantime I’ve posted some tunes on the new “songs page.” I wanted to do something a little more interesting than just playing the song, so I decided to borrow an idea from the Astronaut project I liked so much.

Images based on the lyrics are pulled from Flickr and shown as each song plays. When it’s working as intended, apt photos are displayed in time with the music. When it works as unintended, some pretty weird photos can show up. Either way, I’m down.

Since the photos are somewhat random and people are constantly uploading new photos to Flickr, the videos should change every time you watch them.

I only have a couple of the songs up for now, but I’ll get them all posted in the next couple days.

For Developers:
I’m posting the source code here in case anyone else wants to use it. Like many projects I work on, I start out writing well-organized, elegant code, but as the night wears on the cutting of corners tends to increase. In other words, I apologize if it’s hard to work with.

You will need a Flickr API Key and your own stinking songs.
Download 20kb .zip: FlickrTunes_0.6

CHANGE LOG

FlickrTunes 0.6
I made the search a little more flexible so it works with full text searches now.

If you put a “~” before the search term, it does a full text search.
{s:”~raised glasses”, t:”0:05″}
If you put a “+” before a search term, it must match ALL of the comma-separated tags.
{s:”+friends,hug”, t:”0:42″}
Otherwise it tries to match ANY of the comma-separated tags.
{s:”friends,hug”, t:”0:42″}

In lieu of road rage, here is a song.

Lyrics
I’m gonna drive in a lane that doesn’t really exist
I’m gonna drive in a lane that doesn’t really exist
I’ll honk my horn when you don’t let me merge back in
So just wait ’till I pass through
‘Cause I’m more important than you

I don’t have time to use my turning signal
No I don’t have time to use my turning signal
I’m gonna move willy-nilly all around the road
So just anticipate what I’m gonna do
‘Cause I’m more important than you

I’ll honk my horn as soon as the light turns green
Yeah, I’m gonna honky my horn as soon as the light turns green
My car accelerates in the blink of an eye
I don’t see why yours won’t too
Perhaps ’cause I’m more important than you

I’ll leave my car right here in the middle of the road
I said I’m gonna leave my car right here in the middle of the road
It’s okay because I left my hazard lights on
I’ll be back in an hour or two
‘Cause I’m more important than you

It’s a breakup song.

I got the idea for this song after visiting the Hoover Dam and seeing a little plaque dedicated to a dog.  I learned that the plaque was there to honor the Hoover Dam mascot, a dog who lived and “worked” at the dam during its construction.

Here’s the official story if anyone is interested.

I was downtown for some shenanigans when I happened to walk by my bank. I did a double take because I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen my bank before. But there it was. They have a fancy engraved sign and everything. Looks nice. Sturdy. I’m glad it’s my bank. I deposited some checks while I was there.

It was so nice to see my bank that I took a picture of it. It was then that I realized that everything looks pleasant when you use a flash in the snow, whether it’s my bank…

…or the puppet bike…

…or even a marquee for a Michael McDonald concert.

It took me a second to decode Jason Pickleman’s public art in the new Montrose brown line station. I knew it was supposed to “reflect the street names of the community,” and at first glance the letters look recognizable, but when read left to right, they don’t actually make any sense.  Wolwarashloak?

A clue, however, is etched into the front windows.