I have the ability to apply a mental filter that enables me to not only tune out, but deny the actual existence, of certain things – Grateful Dead songs and Microsoft commercials being the most critical. Consequently, I missed a profoundly inane Microsoft video promoting a product called Songsmith until I saw a post about it on the Contrarian’s blog. Like Casey, I can’t decide if this is a hamfisted attempt at being ironic, or if it’s just hamfisted. I do know it’s way too long. And stupid. Also, that anyone who showed up in a coffee shop and sang into their laptop would probably be beaten to a pulp.

After I started this post I was catching up on some mailing-list mail and saw this being discussed on a music industry list, which led me to some pretty amusing videos of popular songs put through Songsmith. There are a lot of them (where have I been?) but in a quick survey (read: I listened to the first 30 seconds of 2 or 3 of them) I found Van Halen’s “Running with the Devil” to be rather amusing.

Not nearly as amusing, however, as Husband’s highschool friends, the Legion of Rockstars, whose YouTube contributions once made me laugh so hard I almost died from the hiccups I got. Er, that might not be much of an endorsement. According to a previous post I made about them, “…their performance of Van Halen’s “Jump” is also very, very funny. Maybe even funnier than Journey. Stick with it to the guitar and keyboard “solos” at the end. That’s quality.” So there you have it. I don’t know what you have, but that’s not really my problem.

On a related note, it doesn’t look like I can declare victory in my quest to restore my archives just yet – a search just revealed that all of the Microsoft Bob posts (circa 2003) are MIA. So close…