Hello everybody out there in internet-land; Ernie here again. I guess it’s been a few days since you last heard from me. I suspect many of you have been wondering where I’ve been. Well, I have been on an extensive sabbatical. I have journeyed far and wide throughout this whole wide house searching for the meaning of life. Alas, it has eluded me. Maybe someday I’ll make it up write it down and post it for you. However, I have found something that will help to add meaning to everyone else’s lives; a video game.
As you may recall, a little while back “Weird Al” Yankovic played at The Redneck. Now I have been a Close Personal Friend of Al for quite some time and after the concert he and I got to talking about doing a project together. We started talking about collaborating on an album but then I came across something that changed my mind. Nikki Sixx wrote a book of “memoirs” about all his wonderful experiences as a smack addict; and then he formed his own band and recorded a soundtrack for the book. Now, I figure that kind of self-parody is so damn funny that Al and I couldn’t possibly compete with it.
Then the Christmas season was upon us and everyone who was anyone was out buying Guitar Hero – World Tour or Rock Band (anybody who didn’t want their children to grow up and hate them forever was careful to purchase both along with all available expansion packs). So Al and I got to thinking about kids who already had these games and were already bored of them. What could we do to help these poor unfortunate, underprivileged urchins? I took a stroll through the park to help clear my mind and open it up to new ideas. At one point I started to think about how human perception is so funny. Why does a Frisbee appear to grow larger the closer it gets to you? Then it hit me.
After I woke up, I suddenly knew what we could do. I called Al right away and we talked it out at length; and thus was born Accordion Hero. Soon everyone will be able to play a fake accordion just as well as they can play a fake guitar. At the same time we will be launching a completely separate, utterly non-compatible game called Polka Band. It comes with the accordion, a mandolin and a ukulele. For percussion, you’ll be able to do it just like Jon “Bermuda” Schwartz did when “Weird Al” first recorded his smash hit, “Another One Rides The Bus”; you just hit the accordion case with your hands (that way you’ll keep it real). To start out you can cut your teeth and practice your chops on “Weird Al”s greatest polkas; “Polka Your Eyes Out”, “Angry White Boy Polka” and “The Way Moby Polka”. As well as some classics made famous by The Polka King – Frank Yankovic; “The Too Fat Polka” and “The Beer Barrel Polka” Once you’ve mastered these, every two months you can purchase (or rather have your parents purchase for you) a new expansion disc with a few more songs on it; and in a year we’ll have the completely brand-new, also non-compatible, Polka Band 2: Garage Polka Band that you won’t be able to live without.
Both Accordion Hero and Polka Band will be available on Brown Tuesday (the day after the Canadian Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year for leaf raking implements and garbage bags). For now though you can try the online-beta version of Accordion Hero.