The Drabblecast

I got a swirly from a wookie, now that’s a wooly bully
Let me take a step back and tell it to ya fully.


You gotta watch your back at the school that I’m from
Gotta keep your shields up and your cloaking devices on
I might make the honor-roll if I can keep myself alive
As a transfer student at sci-fi high


Our homeroom teachers got a face that you’ll never see a smile on
She’s a bitch and I think that she’s a cylon
She finishes roll call and I start off my day
By getting my lunchmoney abducted by a couple a greys.
So then the next class I’m in
Had a Cardassian
Who made a paper X-wing and then threw it at the Thing
He was shootin spitballs at jawas and I was powerless
But that was not the time or the place for cowards and I was out of there before The Thing went crazy in a Jupiter minute – he beat his ass and gave in back with a tribble stuffed in it- Bring it!
That’s why we sing it, cuz we learn firsthand
One wrong move and it’s game over man

Storm troopers in the bathroom
Smoking it up
Facehuggers in the class room
always disrupt
The cafeteria really is
run by jabba the Hutt
all systems are down
so turn your stereo up

A sophmore predator sliced up the janitor
They sent him to detention for disruptive behavior
When they made him call his mom and give back the spinal column
He said – “yall done me wrong, I don’t see what’s so appaling!”
I’m a warrior, yee yall don’t even know me-
yall just jealous of my bling- get your hands off my trophy biaatch!

Lunch time and I’m in the cafeteria
some dalecks start talkin smack about how they are superior
Some reavers were just leavin and asked “are you serious?”
Or am Im mishearin ya, cuz yall must be delirious”
That’s when things got crazy for reeo
A Minbari and a Centauri threw a burrito at Neo
And Boba Fet and princess Leia threw a plate of mashed potatoes
At a couple piggie males who failed to dodge the hail of food
That’s how we do, and when we through with that maelstrom
It’s time for psychohistory class with harry seldon

Storm troopers in the bathroom
Smoking it up
Facehuggers in the class room
always disrupt
The cafeteria really is
run by jabba the Hutt
all systems are down
so turn your stereo up

I don’t fit in with the guys
I don’t get down with the ladies
Like I’m the only Harkonnen in a House of Atriedes
All alone like Charlton Heston on da planet of Apes, he’s afraid
he’ll get enslaved or even get rabies, or maybe
Like Michael J Fox, lost outside the 80’s
His Delorian broke down again he don’t know what day it is,
I’m a lona, just tryin to find a way to get by
Earn my diploma if I can find a way to survive


Storm troopers in the bathroom
Smoking it up
Facehuggers in the class room
always disrupt
The cafeteria really is
run by jabba the Hutt
all systems are down
so turn your stereo up

Okay, this needs to become one of those "viral" things that everyone on the whole internet ends up listening to. Anybody know how to get that started? I'm emailing this link to people I know. Loyal listeners, do your part!

http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/File ... ihigh!.mp3

I am the "inspiration" in that my husband requested a song for me on my birthday. Gotta tell ya that this is one of the most romantic things he has ever done. I will be playing the song for each of my classes tomorrow. AWESOME! Great job, Norm!

Mr. Tweedy wrote:Okay, this needs to become one of those "viral" things that everyone on the whole internet ends up listening to. Anybody know how to get that started? I'm emailing this link to people I know. Loyal listeners, do your part!

http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/File ... ihigh!.mp3

Good idea. Make it so!

Mr. Tweedy wrote:Okay, this needs to become one of those "viral" things that everyone on the whole internet ends up listening to.

i was thinkin this too while listening, but it occured to me that there's no such thing as "viral songs" on the interwebz. they always have an animation to go along with it, no matter how shoddily done (sometimes the shoddier the funnier). then it can be youtube-able or break.com-able etc. but bottom line is the hordes of surfers who viralize stuff have to be able to watch something as it goes or they'll get bored immediately.

so, step one if we wanna spread this thing like the tehtix, and im pretty possitive that can done, is to animate it.
and for that, we need a volunteer(s) with 1.) artistic inclination, 2.) a chunk of free-time on their hands, and 3.) are savy with flash. i've got some of 1, a little of 3 and none of 2, but am willing to pitch in some still images of select hilarious scenes like a predator in detention being scolded by a soccer-mom looking predator in a dress.
i'm dead serious about this. keep this thread going with ideas/suggestions. i think we should compile a list of images needed, then me, hopefully bo kaier and anyone else who's willing can divy-up and illustrate them, then send them all to mr. tweedy maybe (you said you were a flash user right?) to string together with the song.

That sounds like an awesome plan! I would be super-happy to make a Flash movie for this if y'all can get me some material to work with. I'm not sure how the copyright stuff would work fur using actual movie clips...

Norm: I'll need a video of you rapping. (Lots of bling.)

Do Predator wear pants? I'm seeing one with the boxers showing, camera angle from the knees as he looks down and does the hand pumps in your face bit. Have the chorus done by the Alien, with the parenthetical background stuff about Jobba the Hut by none other than the Alien's little mouth-guy.
A worthy project indeed.

adam wrote:...

and for that, we need a volunteer(s) with 1.) artistic inclination, 2.) a chunk of free-time on their hands, and 3.) are savy with flash.

...

Come on, we've all been around the internet enough times to know that (1) isn't required at all, and (3) only barely

That said, great bbardle. Did I catch the line "triffids be trippin'" in one of the freestyle breaks? Gotta love Wyndham references.

Seriously, should we be worried about copyright stuff? We wouldn't technically be making money off our video and there is a vast collection of stuff on YouTube that is nothing more than ripped-off video set to ripped-off soundtracks, which is way more infringing than this would be. It doesn't seem like lawyers would care.

Anyhow, I've been thinking about this a bit and I think the way to go would be to make it look as much as possible like a real music video. It would be split about equally between shots of Norm rapping and shots of pertinent scenes in Sci-Fi High, with lots of quick cuts. I think a cartoony (South Park?) style would be the only thing that would be really practical, owing to the $0 budget. All of the various creatures and Norm himself would be drawn as minimalist vector characters and animate with similar lack of realism. Typical Flash stuff. I'd hope to use the "camera" creatively to make it look better than the usual, though.

Norm is performing on a stage someplace with various oddities for backup dancers. There is a human "character" at SFH who we follow around and then lots of quick little shots illustrating the lyrics. If I'm really ambitious I might try to make the movie interactive so that user can grab stuff and trash Norm's stage as the video progresses. I don't know about that, though.

Sound good? Anybody who wants to help with it can do so by contributing artwork. Basically everything that's mentioned in the song needs to be turned into a Flash-worthy vector drawing, and sci-fi stuff that isn't mentioned is fine too. I don't really have time or initiative to draw all that stuff and also do all the Flash, so the completion of this is dependent on collaboration.

Norm, if you could do a video of yourself doing the song, that would be very useful. Just be standing in front of a blank wall.

Needless to say, this will probably take a long time to finish.

Wow, that'd be cool- and good marketing for the podcast. Ya, I could get my hands on a vid camera and get some footage droppin these phat rhymes.

As far as copyrights, there's sooo much crappy fan art/viral stuff on the net. I don't think it snags the attention of lawyers usually unless the images etc are drawing in revenue, so I think it would be fine. But may need to ask someone who knows more about intelectual property etc.

i just took a copyright law class- finished a couple weeks ago. but you may want to wait till grades come out to decide if you want to listen to anything i say.
the song would pass as a parody of the references involved but my understanding is using actual clips would technically be an infringement- but not so much of one that we should be really concerned about it. if it's just little snippets it could be de minimus or not a big enough deal to be sued for. those masses of tribute things on the web get away with it because there's no good reason at all to try to sue a little 14 year old for something harmless like that, and the copyright owners would spend more on court fees than they'd actually get in damages. besides if it gets popular all it's doing is publicity for you, not hurting you.
regardless, we'd only get in trouble for violating the public performance right via broadcasting it online- so the worst that could happen is youtube gets an angry letter from one of the authors and they have to take it down. one of them could pitch a fit and go after us though for using their clip as part of a derivative work, and again if the clips were illegally downloaded. that would be an utterly silly waste of their time, but i guess if you're really concerned with playing it safe then i'd stick to original artwork and stuff.

I think original artwork would be better anyway just for stylistic reasons. Like, I picture the storm-troopers actually smoking in the bathroom, which you couldn't do with a real clip from Star Wars.

If there were any real clips, it would be better for them to be from really obscure stuff, like that old trifid movie y'all were talking about in the Bleerbo thread, or maybe some cheesy old alien invasion movies. Black and white stuff. Stuff that people would instinctively laugh at.

I'll prob put a version together with better audio if this starts taking off- I was a big procrastinator last week and had to write the song and put it together all on Tuesday.

normsherman wrote:I'll prob put a version together with better audio if this starts taking off- I was a big procrastinator last week and had to write the song and put it together all on Tuesday.

What? You learnt the genre, wrote the song, produced the tracks and mixed them in one day and you're complaining?

I know where you can get all the costumed extras you need. Arrange to do the video at Dragon*Con. Now that'd make it an Event, and a viral genesis.

Mr. Tweedy wrote:I think original artwork would be better anyway just for stylistic reasons. Like, I picture the storm-troopers actually smoking in the bathroom, which you couldn't do with a real clip from Star Wars.

If there were any real clips, it would be better for them to be from really obscure stuff, like that old trifid movie y'all were talking about in the Bleerbo thread, or maybe some cheesy old alien invasion movies. Black and white stuff. Stuff that people would instinctively laugh at.

I did this search on "stormtroopers" on YouTube... mostly looking for the Tokyo Dancer, but there's more there than that: http://youtube.com/results?search_query=stormtrooper&search_type=

You might be able to grope something useful from this Ron Paul Wookiee vid: http://youtube.com/watch?v=f846YDYKDlU

And this one... alright, this is just lame, but: http://youtube.com/watch?v=phpu3YRjAZo&feature=related

Ha! No, I was thinking of making something really original, although that dancing storm trooper is pretty funny.

If Norm gets me a vid of him doing his thing, I'll try to make up a short concept video.

Of course, if someone else wants to make a different video with You Tube clips set to the song, I think the CC license permits that, eh? Multiple versions of the song video floating around surely can't be bad publicity.

cammoblammo wrote:

normsherman wrote:I'll prob put a version together with better audio if this starts taking off- I was a big procrastinator last week and had to write the song and put it together all on Tuesday.

What? You learnt the genre, wrote the song, produced the tracks and mixed them in one day and you're complaining?

Oh I didn't learn the genre in a day. I'm a tru gangsta G, represent.

normsherman wrote:Oh I didn't learn the genre in a day. I'm a tru gangsta G, represent.

Oh norm, you so ghetto-fabulous...

Mr. Tweedy wrote:Ha! No, I was thinking of making something really original, although that dancing storm trooper is pretty funny.

If Norm gets me a vid of him doing his thing, I'll try to make up a short concept video.

Of course, if someone else wants to make a different video with You Tube clips set to the song, I think the CC license permits that, eh? Multiple versions of the song video floating around surely can't be bad publicity.

It'll prob be a couple weeks till I can get my thing together. But it shall be done.