Camelton: The Farewell Tour

Dear friends, 

The Hard Taco song for September, “Lookupable,” is based on my recent browser search history. Every time a random thought or conversation sent me to Google, I put it into the song. As supplementary reading, the appendix at the bottom of this digest contains the answers to all of the questions posed in the song. 

 

Nearly six years ago, we started working on Camelton, the heart-winning and award-warming spoofs of Hamilton songs. I've heard that many of your children grew up with these songs, laughing and molting along with Salamander Camelton, Aaron Bird, George Waspington, The Skylark Sisters, and the rest of their zoological pals.

But when Lin-Manuel Miranda started writing music for Pixar, the global obsession with Hamilton parodies began to wane. By 2021, your children were all clamoring for an Encanto spoof about all my favorite board games, “We Don’t Talk About Uno.” (Confession: nobody was clamoring for this, but if a single person actually asked me to do this, I probably would.) 

But the Camelton playlist felt incomplete. There were too many loose ends! I needed to strut back into octagon one last time and try to give these characters some closure. It was time to launch the flagship of the Camelton flotilla, Naan-Stop. 

We ran into every possible hiccup along the way… blackouts, lost mic cables, cast members losing their mojo, and unexpected controversy about the lyrics (are we allowed to call it Chicken Kiev now, or is it Chicken Kyiv?) But after about a year, it finally came together, and I'm proud to say this is the the longest, funniest, and most appetite-whetting Camelton song in the series:

https://youtu.be/NSMg-OPPSCE

 

I want to express my sincerest gratitude to all of the singers who have given life to all of this nonsense over the years. This has been so much fun, and I am incredibly grateful to be done with it forever now! 

 

With warmest regards,  

Zach

 

Appendix 1: Answers to all of the questions posed in “Lookupable.”

• Both imposter and impostor are correct spellings.

• Gose, the beer, is pronounced goze in the U.S. and goze-uh in Germany.

• The average gas price in Michigan today is $3.83/gallon.

• It isn’t dangerous for dogs to eat grass, but it can be a sign of anxiety.

• The song uses sampled drums, not a real drum set. 

• Jell-o is kosher and considered pareve (not dairy or meat), even though gelatin is made from an animal product. I’m guessing that the rabbi who made that decision was under the thumb of BIG COLLAGEN.

• Stevie Nicks read a cheap paperback book about a girl who was possessed by a Welsh goddess named Rhiannon. She thought the name was cool, and wanted to include it in a song. 

• Sunset tonight is at 8:09 pm.

• Patrick Stewart played Prospero in the 2006 touring company of The Tempest that came to Ann Arbor in 2006.

• Ross Perot died of leukemia.