Apple II Bits

The crux of KansasFest are the daytime sessions that educate attendees on a variety of important topics. At KansasFests 2010 & 2011, I filled gaps in the schedule with "Know Your Meme", a session that introduced the audience to pop culture phenomena that have appeared and spread throughout the Internet. The 2010 session featured such wonders as "Double Rainbow" and "Old Spice Guy", whereas 2011 presented a more coherent narrative that deftly wove together Keyboard Cat, Nyan Cat, and "Can’t Hug Every Cat" into one (in)coherent package.

Besides the tradition of this session, I’ve also emceed KansasFest’s annual Friday night banquet, which historically has been a roast but lately has evolved to provide a variety of entertainment. The memeification of KansasFest began in 2009 with the presentation of LOLgeeks:

This year, we again united our memes and banquet. The hit of the evening came from Steve Weyhrich, who was celebrating his first KansasFest as a member of the event’s steering committee. Steve presented a montage of opening sequences for CSI: KFest, with Steve in the role of Horatio Caine:

My own contributions were "Strutting Leo Comes to KansasFest" and an iPhoto-inspired take on "Totally Looks Like":

It’s the beard.

But the centerpiece was supposed to be a spoof of the (in)famous song "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen:

This video has been remixed using footage of many individuals — everyone from Barack Obama to Lt. Commander Data. So I spent the week at KansasFest shooting other attendees and splicing their clips together. The result hasn’t been published online because it wasn’t as impressive as I’d hoped, which I blame on my shooting and editing skills.

But again, Steve has saved the day, finding some nugget of value in my efforts. He recently came across this Carly Rae Jepsen–Apple II mash-up — which, for some reason, did not want to post this on his own site! I instead offer it here:

Ah, Oregon Trail — is there anything it can’t do?

At KansasFest 2010, I gave a session on Internet memes: those humorous artifacts of popular culture that spread virally. I suspected that the two I identified, “Double Rainbow” and “Old Spice“, would quickly fade away and be replaced by similarly ephemeral memes.

Though the former remains to be seen, new transitory memes have already surfaced, with one being Strutting Leo. (Note that though the meme is harmless, its URL is NSFW.) Much like the Tourist of Death, the meme revolves around the insertion of a gentleman — in this case, Leonardi DiCaprio from Inception — into photographs and scenes in which he obviously does not belong. The results are surprisingly funny.

Although my Photoshop skills are negligible, the provision of a transparent PNG combined with the most rudimentary familiarity with Photoshop Elements gave me the opportunity to create my own contributions to this meme. And where else would I want Leonardo DiCaprio to go except KansasFest?

A true artist could do much better, but I find my efforts adequate. Do you have your own Apple II scenes into which you’d like to see Leo appear? Drop me a line, and I’ll do my best!

(Hat tip to ROFLrazzi)