One slightly sad point: the beautiful iguanas (green iguanas to be precise) you see above are the target of serious resident-led zoocide (hereptocide?). Evidently, these beautiful and utterly harmless but nonetheless exogenous creatures leave droppings in inconvenient places, and this causes them to attract the ire of local residents. (They come out around 11:00am every day to sun themselves and raise their body temperatures; they generally head “home” around 3:00pm.) At least for this tourist, getting a chance to see a few “wild” iguanas while I was relaxing was a lot of fun, and I can’t imagine why anybody would begrudge them their sun-bathing. Bah Humbug!

**GRINCH UPDATE 12/18: Some militant copyright holder has filed a DMCA Takedown request with YouTube, so this wonderful piece of (IMO) fair use parody was temporarily unavailable. Fortunately, Matt Hempey has created version 1.1, which went online this evening**

**GRINCH UPDATE 12/18: Some militant copyright holder has filed a DMCA Takedown request with YouTube, so this wonderful piece of (IMO) fair use parody was temporarily unavailable. Fortunately, Matt Hempey has created version 1.1, which went online this evening**

As I poked around YouTube to see what other bits of cynical commentary I could find, I found that the group which created this little gem, The Richter Scales, has been busy singing their unique sharp commentary for a while. Check out this equally funny piece (which hasn’t quite gone viral—34,000 views since September) about the sub-prime debt melt-down:

This particular one strikes a chord (sorry ) because the song on which it is based, “There’s a Fine, Fine Line (Between Love and a Waste of Time)” from Avenue Q, was written by my friend and college classmate, Bobby Lopez, who just might just be the youngest composer to win a Tony Award for best score, which he and collaborator Jeff Marx shared in 2004 for Avenue Q. The world is, indeed small.

And it gets smaller.

With a little more poking, I discovered that The Richter Scales are based right here in San Francisco. They’re quite the motley crew of former a cappella singers from various universities. Naturally, since my alma mater has something of an a cappella “problem” (15 singing groups on one campus will do that), I figured I might find a few, and, sure enough, there’s friend Nils Erdmann, a year ahead of me and a member of the elite Senior mens group the Yale Whiffenpoofs. A cappella singing was maybe the highlight of my undergraduate experience, and my group, Out of the Blue, is still going strong—some would say stronger, now that that my voice is but a distant memory!—and celebrating its 20th Anniversary this year. With some 200 or so alumni, there will be a run on hotel rooms in New Haven for the event….)

And now it comes full circle: A cappella singing seems to be somewhat addictive for those of us who indulged in it in college, and just the other night, an old friend from school asked me if I’d sing background on a project her band was working on. Little did I know the evidence would be caught on tape—complete with a street-side serenade and the resultant reaction from our Mission crowd:

And now for the clincher: The Richter Scales have quite the sense of humor (as witness their great “I Hate A Cappella”), but they’re even tougher on the Tech industry. Earlier this year, they were nominated for a CARA award (by CASA, the Contemporary A capella Society of America, who else?) for “I’ve Got Mail”.

Enjoy.**If the Grinch lets you.**

Well, hah! Finally, I have “scientific proof” (or at least one linguist’s corroborative test results) which prove that I’m a New York City native. According to Tom Kun’s very interesting American Regional Accent Map:

What American accent do you have?
Created by Xavier on Memegen.net

Northeastern.
You’re probably from somewhere near New York City, possibly north Jersey, or Connecticut or Rhode Island. If you are from New York City you may be one of the types who people never believe when you say you’re from New York.

So it turns out there is more than one New York Accent. According to Kun, there is another variant of the famous “fuggedaboudit” New York accent. Here is Kun’s explanation:

Q: How did you know I was from New York City when I don’t have an accent?
This is the best part of avoiding stereotypes and focusing on obscure stuff. If you say caught and cot differently, rhyme on with don, and say Mary, merry and marry differently, you can’t be from anywhere besides NYC, north Jersey, and southern New England. It doesn’t matter if you pronounce all your R’s.

If you’d like to test yourself and find out what sort of American accent you have, try the online survey.