Words & Stuff

So I was sitting around with O. and D. and Kam the other night, and someone mentioned Chicago, and D. said his brother Kevin lived in Chicago.

And someone asked what Kevin did there, and D. said he taught math.

And I thought: ... wait ... D's last name is Wald ... Kevin Wald ... Chicago ... math ...

OMG!!!!!

And I said, "Your brother is KEVIN WALD?????"

And indeed he was.

The reason I knew the name Kevin Wald is that he's the author of one of my very favorite filks ever, a piece generally known as "Heroine Barbarian," a Xena filk to the tune of "I am the very model of a modern major-general."

I printed it in my column ten years ago (follow above link to see it), with Kevin's permission, but it somehow never occurred to me that Kevin might have written some other good stuff.

So D. told me that Kevin's web pages included a bunch of other filks, and I went and looked, and lo! it is true!

My favorite is the one that D. proceeded to sing us: "Lord of the Rings," to the tune of "My Favorite Things."

But there are bunches of other fun things on the site as well, such as:

• Old English versions of the Babylon 5 intro voiceover (from season 1) and the Star Trek (TOS) intro voiceover.
• A retelling of Chaucer's "Franklin's Tale" as a filk of "City of New Orleans". "Good morning, Armorica, how are you?"
• "Cole Porter does Indo-European," to the tune of "Anything Goes."
• A reworking of Egils Saga to the schema of "Casey at the Bat."
• Old English Burma Shave signs (and Purple Cow).
• "The Marvelous Toy" in C++.
• A reworking of Sappho's "Hymn to Aphrodite" as a mnemonic for pi.
• "Banned from Aleph," a math filk to the tune of "Banned from Argo."
• A Guy Fawkes song to the tune of "Try To Remember" from The Fantasticks.

And many more.

Highly recommended.