Jonathan Coulton
Jonathan Coulton called "JoCo" by fans, is an American singer-songwriter, known for his songs about geek culture and his use of the Internet to draw fans. Among his most popular songs are "Code Monkey", "Re: Your Brains", "Still Alive" and "Want You Gone", he has been the house musician for NPR weekly puzzle quiz show Ask Me Another since 2012. His album Artificial Heart was the first to chart reaching #1 on Billboard's Top Heatseekers and #125 in the Billboard 200. Coulton's music tends to fit a folk rock style, with elements of indie rock. Coulton graduated in 1993 from Yale. In the 1990s, Coulton was in a short-lived band, the named SuperGroup, with television producer Eric Salat and best-selling author Darin Strauss. A former computer programmer employed at Cluen, a New York City software company, self-described geek, Coulton tended to write quirky, witty lyrics about science fiction and technology: a man who thinks in simian terms, a mad scientist who falls in love with one of his captives, the dangers of bacteria.
Rare topical songs include 2005's "W's Duty", which sampled President George W. Bush, 2006's "Tom Cruise Crazy". Most of Coulton's recordings feature his singing over guitar and drums. Several early podcasters discovered and made regular use of Coulton's music, notably Adam Curry of the Daily Source Code and The Wizards of Technology. In April 2006, he lent his voice to one such podcast, The Spoilers, in which he and hosts Rick Yaeger and Bill Douthett provided a 2-hour fan commentary for Raiders of the Lost Ark, he was the Contributing Troubadour at Popular Science magazine, whose September 2005 issue was accompanied by a five-song set by Coulton called Our Bodies, Our Cybernetic Arms. He was the Musical Director for The Little Gray Book Lectures. From September 16, 2005, to September 30, 2006, Coulton ran "Thing a Week", during which he recorded 52 musical pieces in an effort to push his creative envelope via a "forced-march approach to writing and recording". In a September 2006 interview, he said of the experiment, "In some parts of the country, I'd be making a decent living".
In a February 25, 2008, interview with This Week in Tech, he said that he made more money in 2007 than he did in his last year of working as a programmer, 40% of it from digital downloads and 40% from merchandise and performances. Coulton wrote and performed a song titled "Still Alive" for the ending credits of Valve's 2007 video game Portal, with vocals by Ellen McLain. On April 1, 2008, Harmonix made this track available as free downloadable content for the game Rock Band. A version with Coulton's vocals was included on the Orange Box Original Soundtrack, in addition to the one heard at the end of the game. "Re: Your Brains" made an appearance as an easter egg in Left 4 Dead 2. The song has been called "the most influential game music". In 2011, Coulton followed up the success of "Still Alive" with a new song at the end of Portal 2, "Want You Gone", he wrote the song "You Wouldn't Know" for Lego Dimensions. Coulton is known for original pieces such as "Code Monkey", featured on Slashdot on April 23, 2006, linked from the webcomic Penny Arcade.
It was the theme song for an animated show on G4 called Code Monkeys. His work has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered. Good Morning Silicon Valley featured a link to a video set to his song "Re: Your Brains". Coulton accompanied John Hodgman on his "700 Hobo Names" promotional track for Hodgman's book The Areas of My Expertise as the guitarist. Coulton can be heard throughout the audiobook version of the same book, playing the theme song to the book, playing incidental music, bantering with Hodgman, who reads the audio version of his work. Hodgman has mentioned Coulton on The Daily Show: a Jonathan Coulton of Colchester, was Hodgman's pick to win an essay contest on overpowering Iraqi resistance to American invasion. Coulton performed "the winning entry", a song about dropping snakes from airplanes. Coulton appeared on the tour for More Information Than You Require. Coulton composed the title music for the show Mystery Diagnosis, has contributed other songs under "The Little Gray Book Lectures", a series of audio releases from John Hodgman.
In 2006, Coulton began touring with Storm. Coulton opened the concerts, but as his popularity grew, he began headlining. A DVD & CD of a concert performed February 22, 2008, at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, entitled Best. Concert. Ever. was released in 2009. At the concert, Coulton played "Still Alive" along with guest "musicians" and geek/celebrities Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann and Veronica Belmont. Coulton opened for They Might Be Giants for a few shows of their March 2010 tour, he toured with them again in February 2012. Coulton had been working on his follow-up to the Thing a Week albums, tentatively titled The Aftermath, he said. On May 25, 2010, Coulton said on his official site that he would work on a new album, to be produced by John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants, for the first time with a full band, including Ma
A cappella
A cappella music is group or solo singing without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It contrasts with cantata, accompanied singing; the term "a cappella" was intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato style. In the 19th century a renewed interest in Renaissance polyphony coupled with an ignorance of the fact that vocal parts were doubled by instrumentalists led to the term coming to mean unaccompanied vocal music; the term is used, albeit as a synonym for alla breve. A cappella music was used in religious music church music as well as anasheed and zemirot. Gregorian chant is an example of a cappella singing, as is the majority of secular vocal music from the Renaissance; the madrigal, up until its development in the early Baroque into an instrumentally-accompanied form, is usually in a cappella form. Jewish and Christian music were a cappella, this practice has continued in both of these religions as well as in Islam.
The polyphony of Christian a cappella music began to develop in Europe around the late 15th century AD, with compositions by Josquin des Prez. The early a cappella polyphonies may have had an accompanying instrument, although this instrument would double the singers' parts and was not independent. By the 16th century, a cappella polyphony had further developed, but the cantata began to take the place of a cappella forms. 16th century a cappella polyphony, continued to influence church composers throughout this period and to the present day. Recent evidence has shown that some of the early pieces by Palestrina, such as what was written for the Sistine Chapel was intended to be accompanied by an organ "doubling" some or all of the voices; such is seen in the life of Palestrina becoming a major influence on Bach, most notably in the Mass in B Minor. Other composers that utilized the a cappella style, if only for the occasional piece, were Claudio Monteverdi and his masterpiece, Lagrime d'amante al sepolcro dell'amata, composed in 1610, Andrea Gabrieli when upon his death it was discovered many choral pieces, one of, in the unaccompanied style.
Learning from the preceding two composeres, Heinrich Schütz utilized the a cappella style in numerous pieces, chief among these were the pieces in the oratorio style, which were traditionally performed during the Easter week and dealt with the religious subject matter of that week, such as Christ's suffering and the Passion. Five of Schutz's Historien were Easter pieces, of these the latter three, which dealt with the passion from three different viewpoints, those of Matthew and John, were all done a cappella style; this was a near requirement for this type of piece, the parts of the crowd were sung while the solo parts which were the quoted parts from either Christ or the authors were performed in a plainchant. In the Byzantine Rite of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches, the music performed in the liturgies is sung without instrumental accompaniment. Bishop Kallistos Ware says, "The service is sung though there may be no choir... In the Orthodox Church today, as in the early Church, singing is unaccompanied and instrumental music is not found."
This a cappella behavior arises from strict interpretation of Psalms 150, which states, Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord. In keeping with this philosophy, early Russian musika which started appearing in the late 17th century, in what was known as khorovïye kontsertï made a cappella adaptations of Venetian-styled pieces, such as the treatise, Grammatika musikiyskaya, by Nikolai Diletsky. Divine Liturgies and Western Rite masses composed by famous composers such as Peter Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alexander Arkhangelsky, Mykola Leontovych are fine examples of this. Present-day Christian religious bodies known for conducting their worship services without musical accompaniment include some Presbyterian churches devoted to the regulative principle of worship, Old Regular Baptists, Primitive Baptists, Plymouth Brethren, Churches of Christ, Church of God, the Old German Baptist Brethren, Doukhobors the Byzantine Rite and the Amish, Old Order Mennonites and Conservative Mennonites.
Certain high church services and other musical events in liturgical churches may be a cappella, a practice remaining from apostolic times. Many Mennonites conduct some or all of their services without instruments. Sacred Harp, a type of folk music, is an a cappella style of religious singing with shape notes sung at singing conventions. Opponents of musical instruments in the Christian worship believe that such opposition is supported by the Christian scriptures and Church history; the scriptures referenced are Matthew 26:30. There is no reference to instrumental music in early church worship in the New Testament, or in the worship of churches for the first six centuries. Several reasons have been posited throughout church history for the absence of instrumental music in church worship. Christians who believe in a cappella music today believe that in the Israelite worship assembly during Temple worship only the Priests of Levi sang and offered animal sacrifices, whereas in the church era, all Christians are commanded to sing praises to God.
They believe that if God
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre known as Broadway, refers to the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats located in the Theater District and Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Along with London's West End theatre, Broadway theatre is considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world; the Theater District is a popular tourist attraction in New York City. According to The Broadway League, for the 2017–2018 season total attendance was 13,792,614 and Broadway shows had US$1,697,458,795 in grosses, with attendance up 3.9%, grosses up 17.1%, playing weeks up 2.8%. The majority of Broadway shows are musicals. Historian Martin Shefter argues that "'Broadway musicals', culminating in the productions of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, became enormously influential forms of American popular culture" and contributed to making New York City the cultural capital of the Western Hemisphere.
New York did not have a significant theatre presence until about 1750, when actor-managers Walter Murray and Thomas Kean established a resident theatre company at the Theatre on Nassau Street, which held about 280 people. They presented Shakespeare ballad operas such as The Beggar's Opera. In 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager, they established a theatre in Williamsburg and opened with The Merchant of Venice and The Anatomist. The company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida; the Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the year the 2,000-seat Park Theatre was built on Chatham Street. The Bowery Theatre opened followed by others. By the 1840s, P. T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in Lower Manhattan. In 1829, at Broadway and Prince Street, Niblo's Garden opened and soon became one of New York's premiere nightspots.
The 3,000-seat theatre presented all sorts of non-musical entertainments. In 1844, Palmo's Opera House opened and presented opera for only four seasons before bankruptcy led to its rebranding as a venue for plays under the name Burton's Theatre; the Astor Opera House opened in 1847. A riot broke out in 1849 when the lower-class patrons of the Bowery objected to what they perceived as snobbery by the upper class audiences at Astor Place: "After the Astor Place Riot of 1849, entertainment in New York City was divided along class lines: opera was chiefly for the upper middle and upper classes, minstrel shows and melodramas for the middle class, variety shows in concert saloons for men of the working class and the slumming middle class."The plays of William Shakespeare were performed on the Broadway stage during the period, most notably by American actor Edwin Booth, internationally known for his performance as Hamlet. Booth played the role for a famous 100 consecutive performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1865, would revive the role at his own Booth's Theatre.
Other renowned Shakespeareans who appeared in New York in this era were Henry Irving, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Davenport, Charles Fechter. Theatre in New York moved from downtown to midtown beginning around 1850, seeking less expensive real estate. In the beginning of the 19th century, the area that now comprises the Theater District was owned by a handful of families and comprised a few farms. In 1836, Mayor Cornelius Lawrence opened 42nd Street and invited Manhattanites to "enjoy the pure clean air." Close to 60 years theatrical entrepreneur Oscar Hammerstein I built the iconic Victoria Theater on West 42nd Street. Broadway's first "long-run" musical was a 50-performance hit called The Elves in 1857. In 1870, the heart of Broadway was in Union Square, by the end of the century, many theatres were near Madison Square. Theatres did not arrive in the Times Square area until the early 1900s, the Broadway theatres did not consolidate there until a large number of theatres were built around the square in the 1920s and 1930s.
New York runs continued to lag far behind those in London, but Laura Keene's "musical burletta" The Seven Sisters shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances. It was at a performance by Keene's troupe of Our American Cousin in Washington, D. C. that Abraham Lincoln was shot. The first theatre piece that conforms to the modern conception of a musical, adding dance and original music that helped to tell the story, is considered to be The Black Crook, which premiered in New York on September 12, 1866; the production was five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a "musical comedy". Tony Pastor opened the first vaudeville theatre one block east of Union Square in 1881, where Lillian Russell performed. Comedians Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart produced and starred in musicals on Broadway between 1878 and 1890, with book and lyrics by Harrigan and music by his father-in-law David Braham.
These musical comedies featured characters and situations taken from the everyday life of New York's lower classes and represented a significant step forward from vaudeville and burlesque, towards a more literate form. They starred high quality singers, instead of the women of questionable repute who had starred in earlier m
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein was an American composer, author, music lecturer, pianist. He was among the first conductors educated in the US to receive worldwide acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history."His fame derived from his long tenure as the music director of the New York Philharmonic, from his conducting of concerts with most of the world's leading orchestras, from his music for West Side Story, Peter Pan, Wonderful Town, On the Town, On the Waterfront, his Mass, a range of other compositions, including three symphonies and many shorter chamber and solo works. Bernstein was the first conductor to give a series of television lectures on classical music, starting in 1954 and continuing until his death, he was a skilled pianist conducting piano concertos from the keyboard. He was a critical figure in the modern revival of the music of Gustav Mahler, the composer he was most passionately interested in.
As a composer he wrote in many styles encompassing symphonic and orchestral music, ballet and theatre music, choral works, chamber music and pieces for the piano. Many of his works are performed around the world, although none has matched the tremendous popular and critical success of West Side Story, he was born Louis Bernstein in Lawrence, the son of Ukrainian Jewish parents Jennie and Samuel Joseph Bernstein, a hairdressing supplies wholesaler originating from Rivne. His family spent their summers at their vacation home in Massachusetts, his grandmother insisted that his first name be Louis, but his parents always called him Leonard, which they preferred. He changed his name to Leonard when he was fifteen, shortly after his grandmother's death. To his friends and many others he was known as "Lenny", his father, Sam Bernstein, was a businessman and owner of a hair product store in downtown Lawrence on the corners of Amesbury and Essex Streets. Sam opposed young Leonard's interest in music. Despite this, the elder Bernstein took him to orchestral concerts in his teenage years and supported his music education.
At a young age, Bernstein listened to a piano performance and was captivated. Bernstein attended Boston Latin School; as a child, he was close to his younger sister Shirley, would play entire operas or Beethoven symphonies with her at the piano. He had a variety of piano teachers in his youth, including Helen Coates, who became his secretary. After graduation from Boston Latin School in 1935, Bernstein attended Harvard University, where he studied music with, among others, Edward Burlingame Hill and Walter Piston. Although he majored in music with a final year thesis entitled "The Absorption of Race Elements into American Music", Bernstein's main intellectual influence at Harvard was the aesthetics Professor David Prall, whose multidisciplinary outlook on the arts Bernstein shared for the rest of his life. One of his friends at Harvard was philosopher Donald Davidson. Bernstein wrote and conducted the musical score for the production Davidson mounted of Aristophanes' play The Birds in the original Greek.
Bernstein reused some of this music in the ballet Fancy Free. During his time at Harvard he was an accompanist for the Harvard Glee Club. Bernstein mounted a student production of The Cradle Will Rock, directing its action from the piano as the composer Marc Blitzstein had done at the premiere. Blitzstein, who heard about the production, subsequently became a influence on Bernstein. Bernstein met the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos at the time. Although he never taught Bernstein, Mitropoulos's charisma and power as a musician were a major influence on Bernstein's eventual decision to take up conducting. Mitropoulos was not stylistically that similar to Bernstein, but he influenced some of Bernstein's habits such as his conducting from the keyboard, his initial practice of conducting without a baton and his interest in Mahler; the other important influence that Bernstein first met during his Harvard years was composer Aaron Copland, whom he met at a concert and at a party afterwards on Copland's birthday in 1938.
At the party Bernstein played Copland's Piano Variations, a thorny work Bernstein loved without knowing anything about its composer until that evening. Although he was not formally Copland's student as such, Bernstein would seek advice from Copland in the following years about his own compositions and would cite him as "his only real composition teacher". After completing his studies at Harvard in 1939, he enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. During his time at Curtis, Bernstein studied conducting with Fritz Reiner, piano with Isabelle Vengerova, orchestration with Randall Thompson, counterpoint with Richard Stöhr, score reading with Renée Longy Miquelle. Unlike his years at Harvard, Bernstein appears not to have enjoyed the formal training environment of Curtis, although in his life he would mention Reiner when discussing important mentors. After he left Curtis, Bernstein lived in New York, he shared an apartment with his friend Adolph Green and accompanied Green, Betty Comden, Judy Holliday in a comedy trou
Portal 2
Portal 2 is a first-person puzzle-platform video game developed by Valve Corporation. It was released in April 2011 for Windows, OS X, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360; the digital PC version is distributed online by Valve's Steam service, while all retail editions were distributed by Electronic Arts. Like the original Portal, players solve puzzles by teleporting between them. Portal 2 adds features including tractor beams, light bridges, paint-like gels that alter player movement or allow portals to be placed on any surface. In the single-player campaign, players control Chell, who navigates the dilapidated Aperture Science Enrichment Center during its reconstruction by the supercomputer GLaDOS. In the new cooperative mode, players solve puzzles together as robots P-Body. Jonathan Coulton and the National produced songs for the game. Valve announced Portal 2 in March 2010, promoted it with alternate reality games including the Potato Sack, a collaboration with several independent game developers. After release, Valve released downloadable content and a simplified map editor to allow players to create and share levels.
Portal 2 received acclaim for its gameplay, balanced learning curve, dark humor and acting. It has been described as one of the greatest video games of all time by numerous publications and critics. Portal 2 is a first-person perspective puzzle game; the player takes the role of Chell in the single-player campaign, as one of two robots—Atlas and P-Body—in the cooperative campaign, or as a simplistic humanoid icon in community-developed puzzles. These four characters can interact with the environment. Characters will die after sustained injury. There is no penalty for falling onto a solid surface, but falling into bottomless pits or toxic pools kills the player character immediately; when Chell dies in the single-player game, the game restarts from a recent checkpoint. The goal of both campaigns is to explore the Aperture Science Laboratory—a complicated, malleable mechanized maze. While most of the game takes place in modular test chambers with defined entrances and exits, other parts occur in behind-the-scenes areas where the objective is less clear.
The initial tutorial levels guide the player through the general movement controls and illustrate how to interact with the environment. The player must solve puzzles using the'portal gun' or'Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device', which can create two portals connecting two distant surfaces depicted as matte white and flat. Characters can use these portals to move between rooms or to "fling" objects or themselves across a distance. Outlines of placed portals are visible through other obstacles for easy location. Game elements include Thermal Discouragement Beams, Excursion Funnels, Hard Light Bridges, all of which can be transmitted through portals. Aerial Faith Plates launch the player or objects through the air and sometimes into portals; the player must avoid their line of sight. The Weighted Storage Cube has been redesigned, there are new types: Redirection Cubes, which have prismatic lenses that redirect laser beams, spherical Edgeless Safety Cubes, an antique version of the Weighted Storage Cube used in the underground levels, a cube-turret hybrid created by Wheatley after taking control of Aperture.
The heart-decorated Weighted Companion Cube reappears briefly. Early demonstrations included Pneumatic Diversity Vents, shown to transport objects and transfer suction power through portals, but these do not appear in the final game. All of these game elements open locked doors, or help or hamper the character from reaching the exit. Paint-like gels impart certain properties to objects coated with them. Players can use orange Propulsion Gel to cross surfaces more blue Repulsion Gel to bounce from a surface, white Conversion Gel to allow surfaces to accept portals. Only one type of gel can affect a certain surface at a time; some surfaces, such as grilles, cannot be coated with a gel. Water can wash away gels, returning the surface or object to its normal state; the game includes a two-player cooperative mode. Two players can use a separate computer or console. Both player-characters are robots that control separate portal guns and can use the other character's portals; each player's portals are of a different color scheme, whereof one is blue and purple and the other is orange and red.
A calibration chamber separates the characters to teach the players to use the communication tools and portals. Most chambers are less structured and require players to use both sets of portals for laser or funnel redirection and other maneuvers; the game provides voice communication between players, online players can temporarily enter a split-screen view to help coordinate actions. Players can "ping" to draw the other player's attention to walls or objects, start countdown timers for synchronized actions, perform joint gestures such as waving or hugging; the game tracks which chambers each player has completed and allows players to replay chambers they have completed with new partners. Portal 2's lead writer Erik Wolpaw estimates each campaign to be about six hours long. Portal 2 contains in-game commentary from
Robert Lopez
Robert Lopez is an American songwriter of musicals, best known for co-creating The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q, for composing the songs featured in the Disney animated films Frozen and Coco, with his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez. Of only fifteen people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award, he is the quickest to win all four, and, as of 2018, is the only person to have won all four awards more than once. Robert Lopez was born to Katherine and Frank Lopez, his father was director of publications for NYU Langone Medical Center. Lopez spent much of his childhood in Greenwich Village, except for one year in Massachusetts while his father was working for Clark University. Upon their return to New York City when he was six years old, "it was a fluke" that he started piano lessons at Greenwich House Music School; the apartment they were subletting at the time happened to have a piano. At age seven, his parents bought a piano for him, he saw his first Broadway show, he wrote his first song.
At age 11, he wrote his first opening number. At around age 12, he drifted away from the piano and tried playing the saxophone, as well as taking courses in musical composition at other music schools. Lopez went on to Hunter College High School and to Yale University where he graduated in 1997 with a B. A. in English. While at Yale, he wrote three plays and was a member of the Yale Spizzwinks a cappella group, was influenced by professors such as Vincent Scully, John Hollander and Harold Bloom. During his time at Yale, he vaguely hoped to make a living writing musicals and "had no career options". Upon graduating from Yale, Lopez moved back in with his parents and brother in Greenwich Village, where he lived for four years until he was able to earn enough money writing songs for Theatreworks USA to rent an apartment of his own. During this period, he took temporary jobs at companies like Pfizer and worked as a weekend receptionist for his old music school, Greenwich House. In 1998, while participating in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, he met another aspiring songwriter, Jeff Marx.
Their first project together, Prince of Denmark, a Muppet parody of Hamlet, won the Kleban Award for lyrics, though The Jim Henson Company rejected the script, saying it did not have enough "kid appeal." The story was considered for the next Muppet film by Chris Curtin in 2004, until Curtin left the Disney Company. Highlights from the unproduced musical were performed by Rick Lyon, Rebecca Jones, Susan Blackwell at the BMI Workshop. In 1999, Lopez and Marx, who collaborated on both music and lyrics, began work on Avenue Q, a stage musical which, using puppet characters, similar to those on Sesame Street, dealt with adult themes and ideas; the show, for which Lopez provided the animated segments, was his first professional experience. After playing Off-Broadway, the show transferred in July 2003 to Broadway's John Golden Theatre, where it proved both a critical and popular success, winning the 2004 Tony Award for Best Musical, earning Lopez and Marx the Tony Award for Best Original Score; the Original Cast Recording was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2004.
In 2005, Lopez began working on a new musical project with his musical partner Jeff Marx, with Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, a series which, in 2003, Lopez had mentioned as a partial inspiration for Avenue Q. The Book of Mormon premiered on Broadway at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on March 24, 2011, following previews from February 24; the show received numerous theater accolades, including the 2011 Tony for Best Musical, as well as two more Tony Awards for Lopez: Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical. The production's original cast recording earned Lopez the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. In early 2006, Lopez collaborated with his brother, Billy, on several episodes of the Nickelodeon series Wonder Pets, for which they shared a Daytime Emmy award with the series' other composers and Music Director, Jeffrey Lesser, in 2008. In January 2007, a musical adaptation of the Disney/Pixar film Finding Nemo, which Lopez co-wrote with his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, opened at Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park.
On January 18, 2007, Lopez and Marx again collaborated to write four of the songs for the hit TV show Scrubs on the show's 123rd episode titled "My Musical." TV Guide named the episode one of the best 100 TV show episodes of all time in 2009. Lopez, along with Jeff Marx, was recognized with an Emmy nomination for the song "Everything Comes Down to Poo" from the above-mentioned episode. Stephanie D'Abruzzo, who originated the roles of Kate Monster and Lucy the Slut in Avenue Q, guest-starred in the episode. In April 2010, Lopez won an Lopez wrote the song "Bet Against the American Dream", featured on the NPR program "This American Life"; the song was written in the style of a Broadway show tune, parodied a scene from the musical "The Producers" to illustrate the story of a real-life hedge fund called Magnetar that made millions of dollars when the housing market collapsed. On June 25, 2010, Lopez won his second Daytime Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction and Composition for his work on Tte Wonder Pets!.
In 2011, Lopez again worked with Matt Stone and Trey Parker on the South Park episode "Broadway Bro Down". Lopez co-wrote two songs for the Disney Channel animated series Phineas and Ferb: "Aerial Area Rug" for the episode "Magic Car
The Daily Show
The Daily Show is an American late-night talk and news satire television program. It airs each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central. Describing itself as a fake news program, The Daily Show draws its comedy and satire from recent news stories, political figures, media organizations, uses self-referential humor as well; the half-hour-long show premiered on July 21, 1996, was first hosted by Craig Kilborn until December 17, 1998. Jon Stewart took over as the host from January 11, 1999, until August 6, 2015, making the show more focused on political satire and news satire, in contrast with the pop culture focus during Kilborn's tenure. Stewart was succeeded by Trevor Noah, whose tenure premiered on September 28, 2015. Under different hosts, the show has been formally known as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart from 1999 until 2015, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah since 2015; the Daily Show is the longest-running program on Comedy Central, has won 24 Primetime Emmy Awards. The program is popular among young audiences.
The Pew Research Center suggested in 2010 that 74% of regular viewers were between 18 and 49, that 10% of the audience watched the show for its news headlines, 2% for in-depth reporting, 43% for entertainment, compared with 64% who watched CNN for the news headlines. Critics chastised Stewart for not conducting sufficiently hard-hitting interviews with his political guests, some of whom he may have lampooned in previous segments. Stewart and other Daily Show writers responded to such criticism by saying that they do not have any journalistic responsibility and that as comedians their only duty is to provide entertainment. Stewart's appearance on the CNN show Crossfire picked up this debate, where he chastised the CNN production and hosts for not conducting informative and current interviews on a news network; each episode begins with announcer Drew Birns announcing the date and the introduction, "From Comedy Central's World News Headquarters in New York, this is The Daily Show with Trevor Noah".
The introduction was "This is The Daily Show, the most important television program, ever." The host opens the show with a monologue drawing from current news stories and issues. The show had divided its news commentary into sections known as "Headlines", "Other News", "This Just In"; some episodes will begin with a 1–3 minute intro on a small story before transitioning into the main story of the night. The monologue segment is followed by a segment featuring an exchange with a correspondent—typically introduced as the show's "senior" specialist in the subject at hand—either at the anchor desk with the host or reporting from a false location in front of a greenscreen showing stock footage, their stated areas of expertise vary depending on the news story, being discussed, can range from general to absurdly specific. The cast of correspondents is quite diverse, many sarcastically portray extreme stereotypes of themselves to poke fun at a news story, such as "Senior Latino Correspondent", "Senior Youth Correspondent" or "Senior Black Correspondent".
They present absurd or humorously exaggerated takes on current events against the host's straight man. While correspondents stated to be reporting abroad are performing in-studio in front of a greenscreen background, on rare occasions, cast members have recorded pieces on location. For instance, during the week of August 20, 2007, the show aired a series of segments called "Operation Silent Thunder: The Daily Show in Iraq" in which correspondent Rob Riggle reported from Iraq. In August 2008, Riggle traveled to China for a series of segments titled "Rob Riggle: Chasing the Dragon", which focused on the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Jason Jones traveled to Iran in early June 2009 to report on the Iranian elections, John Oliver traveled to South Africa for the series of segments "Into Africa" to report on the 2010 FIFA World Cup. In March 2012, Oliver traveled to Gabon, on the west African coast, to report on the Gabonese government's decision to donate $2 million to UNESCO after the United States cut its funding for UNESCO earlier that year.
On July 19, 2016, Roy Wood Jr. reported live from the Republican National Convention and talked about Donald Trump's African-American support. Correspondent segments feature a rotating supporting cast, involve the show's members travelling to different locations to file comedic reports on current news stories and conduct interviews with people related to the featured issue. Topics have varied widely. Since Stewart began hosting in 1999, the focus of the show has become more political and the field pieces have come to more reflect current issues and debates. Under Kilborn and the early years of Stewart, most interviewees were either unaware or not aware of the comedic nature of The Daily Show. However, as the show began to gain popularity—particularly following its coverage of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections—most of the subjects now interviewed are aware of the comedic element; some segments have recurred periodically throughout different tenures, such as "Back in Black" & "Your Moment of Zen".
Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a common segment of the show has been dubbed "Mess O' Potamia", focusing on the United States' policies in the Middle East Iraq. Elections in the United States were a prominent focus in the show's "Indecision" cover
