Bob Kanefsky: still the devil.: seanan

Bob Kanefsky: still the devil.

I believe we've discussed this before, but: in the filk community, there is a man by the name of Bob Kanefsky. He is also a verb. To "be Kanef'd" is to have one of your songs gripped in the white-hot maw of his evil genius, chewed up, and spat out as something entirely different. If he and Weird Al Yankovic got into gonzo parody battle (probably in an abandoned warehouse somewhere, with lots of exposed beams and weirdly good lighting), Kanef would win with subtlety and horrifyingly accurate internal rhyme.

To be Kanef'd is a rite of passage in the filk community. It is the announcement that yes, you have made it as a songwriter; yes, you have created something good enough to be worth tinkering with.

The first time I was Kanef'd, I like to've died. Literally—I couldn't breathe. And as with most creative people, he's only improved since then. At the Circus on Saturday night, he launched a new parody at me, using Vixy and Tony as his delivery mechanism.

"I get paid to write a fairy tale:
Tinkerbell’s detective daughter,
Fourteen years of unread mail,
Like a fish out of the water..."

Oh, yeah. He went there.

"Deadline: About the Author" is set to the tune of "My Story Is Not Done," and contains spoilers for/references to the Newsflesh trilogy, the Toby Daye books, and Discount Armageddon. And it is hysterical.

Bob Kanefsky, I salute you.

I shall have my revenge.

archangelbeth

September 13 2012, 18:56:59 UTC 4 years ago

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*dies chortling at "Long as Shakespeare has more titles."*

*rises and dies again at "And I always make a backup"*

That's... pretty hysterical, yup.

I look forward to your revenge!

kanef

September 15 2012, 03:28:58 UTC 4 years ago

You picked out the very two lines that got the biggest laughs at Borderlands, or so it seemed to me.

For that first line, I assume it was partly the recognition of where all her readers know the titles come from, but mostly the image of the series accumulating as many books as there are lines of verse in the complete works of Shakespeare. ("Wake me up when October ends.")

Interestingly, the other line seemed to have a delayed reaction of about one full second. I assume that's how long it took for the first few people to figure out the full meaning of it. Although for all I know, since I was at the back of the room and Seanan was at the front, she might have started laughing at the thought that she always backs up her work, and people might have reacted to her reaction, and it took about one second to propagate to the back of the room at the speed of humor.