MemeMachineGo!

I attended an engineering school. I’ve participated in programming contests. I’ve attended science fiction conventions, comic book conventions, gaming conventions, a furry convention, programming language user group meetings, Linux expos, technical conferences. I know geeky. I’ve worked with geeky. Geeky is a friend of mine.

And Friday night’s Jonathan Coulton concert may have been the geekiest event I’ve ever attended.

The opening act was Paul and Storm, half of what used to be Da Vinci’s Notebook. I saw Da Vinci’s Notebook in Berkeley a while back, in their last tour before breaking up. Between songs, Paul said “We have a theory about our demographic. Raise your hand if you’ve ever owned a d20.” At least half the hands in the audience went up. “Now keep your hand up if you still have it,” he said. Most of those hands stayed up. And one audience member threw a d20 onto the stage. Yes, he’d had it on him.

So that tells you something about the geekiness level of the opening act. While I was disappointed when I heard Da Vinci’s Notebook had broken up when I only got to see them once, Paul and Storm’s act has consoled me — they’re funny as hell and I’d pay money to see them headline anytime.

Then came Jonathan Coulton. I’d heard references to him in the blogosphere, but was first really aware of him when I followed a link to the Code Monkey remix contest. and listened to Code Monkey.

Code Monkey get up get coffee
Code Monkey go to job
Code Monkey have boring meeting with boring manager Rob
Rob say Code Monkey very diligent
But his output stink
His code not functional or elegant
What do Code Monkey think
Code Monkey think maybe manager wanna write goddamn login page himself
Code Monkey not say it out loud
Code Monkey not crazy just proud

I was singing it so much that Pocahontas adapted it to

Code Monkey drive his wife crazy
Singing Code Monkey song

So he sang his set about code monkeys, zombies, mad scientists, Mandelbrot sets (you’re one badass fucking fractal.) He took out a Zendrum to play Mr. Fancy Pants, explaining that he needed to get one for the song “and because it’s frikkin’ awesome!”, obviously beside himself over how cool a toy it is. He played his theme song to Portal, one of the huge video games of 2007, and then later reprised it by bringing up prominent bloggers to play the Rock Band version.

And he owned the audience, who had variously dressed as zombies, brought homemade monkey-pony hybrid stuffed animals to wave during Skullcrusher Mountain, sang along. It was like it was the most important holiday of the year.

Come to think of it, I don’t think that’s far off.