History For Music Lovers

So I was looking at my Gmail account -- which I set up early this year but never actually use, at least not yet. And I found a few emails in it, mostly from YouTube comments. One of them was interesting, though. Remember when I wrote about the Bastille Day celebration at Eastern State? If not, refresh your memory. The first video, featuring the Lady Gaga "Bad Romance" parody, is the one that got the comment. It seems that the parody was originally created by an outfit called History for Music Lovers, and they've got a whole slew of these. Here's their full-length version of the "Bad Romance" revamp, "The French Revolution."



Still think this guy's adorable, by the way. Someone hook me up, please?

Bastille Day Festival 2012

Another bunch of pictures for you to peruse. These are from the annual Bastille Day Festival held at Eastern State Penitentiary. For you out-of-towners, it's not actually operating as a prison now. It's a tourist attraction. Al Capone was once locked up there. Every Halloween they operate a popular haunted house-style tour. And every July there's Bastille Day. This was the first time I checked out the festival and it was apparently revised some this year, so I can't compare it to other years, but it's fun. Essentially, it's a show featuring comedy, song and dance performed by the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, telling the story of the French Revolution (taking many liberties with said story, naturally).

The star of the show was Edith Piaf (who actually lived in the 20th century; I told you, they took liberties with the story). I got there in time to see a pre-show rehearsal, and I kind of developed a little crush on this guy. It's the weirdest thing. Men in heels usually don't do it for me.

I took lots of pictures, which are located here. I also took some video, which is after the jump...

Hashtag NBCFAIL

I have so much to write about that I'm backlogged again. Let's see: two movies, my recent trip to New York (seeing Ricky Martin in Evita, seeing the new Yankee Stadium, etc.), I bought some comic books that aren't Simpsons or Futurama, posting my photos and videos from Bastille Day at Eastern State, not to mention the latest crop of Daily News Sexy Singles.

So why am I writing about NBC?

First, they've made me lose interest in the Summer Olympics. Between the chopped-up tape-delayed events, the near-constant athlete profiles and inane features, the mere presence of Ryan Seacrest, the butchering of the Opening Ceremony, their massive hype about having so many events live online (some of the biggest events weren't actually available online and there have been quite a few complaints about screens freezing and lots of buffering -- and besides, I personally don't want to watch sports on a computer, I WANT TO WATCH THEM ON MY HIGH-DEFINITION TELEVISION), and above all, their arrogant insistence that critics of their coverage must be wrong because the TV ratings are so high, when I actually do have the Olympics on, it's mostly just in the background with me barely paying attention.

(By the way, Blogger doesn't let me put a pound sign in a post title, which is why this post isn't called  #NBCFAIL. I think that's a #BloggerFAIL, to be honest. Or a #GoogleFAIL, since they own it.)

But that's not all.