The Logan Whitehurst Memorial Award for Excellence in Comedy Music

2015 Jurors

Fan Jurors

Kristi Avery

Kristi Avery is the host­ess of Hour 1 of Blind­wulf’s Rub­ber Room Asso­ci­a­tion on Demen­tia Radio. A life long fan of Com­e­dy Music, she enjoys songs new and old, from One Eyed One Horned Fly­ing Pur­ple Peo­ple Eater to Floss Boss (The Offi­cial Hard­core Rap Song About Floss­ing) and is a vocal sup­port­er at live shows. And will occa­sion­al­ly toss panties onstage, if the sit­u­a­tion calls for that (so BEWARE!!!)

Tim and Margie Winslow (aka ‘the Poohs’)

Tim (Pooh Bear) and Margie (Mis­sy) Winslow grew up with par­ents who gave them the gift of watch­ing and lis­ten­ing to com­e­dy and fun­ny music. Years before they met, in their teens, they learned of and lis­tened to the Dr. Demen­to show. On their first date they knew they were meant for each oth­er as they walked hand in hand singing “Dead Pup­pies”. Now, over 30 years togeth­er, they con­tin­ue to have com­e­dy in their lives. With the devel­op­ment of the Inter­net, they found the IRC chat room ear­ly on. They attend­ed some of the ear­li­est con­ven­tions, becom­ing life long friends with many of the the artists and peo­ple in the Demen­tia fan groups. Today, they con­tin­ue to lis­ten and sup­port the Demen­tia community.

(Note: the Winslows will be vot­ing indi­vid­u­al­ly. Any need for divorce lawyers are Jayekit­ty’s fault.)

Angela Brett

Angela Brett learns about the world (espe­cial­ly sci­ence, pop­u­lar cul­ture, cur­rent events, and French) almost exclu­sive­ly through com­e­dy songs, and rarely com­mu­ni­cates with­out using the sen­tence ‘I know a song about that.’ She long con­sid­ered mak­ing her own online data­base of sil­ly songs before dis­cov­er­ing the Sing About Sci­ence web­site and even­tu­al­ly the Mad Music Archive. She was declared Best in Terms of Pants on the JoCo Cruise in 2014. She films all the live shows she has per­mis­sion to, and fre­quent­ly toss­es nov­el­ty male under­wear on stage when the sit­u­a­tion calls for panties.

Musician Jurors

Eric ‘Seamonkey’ Tomme

Sea­mon­key is a par­o­dy artist from Texas with a few #1 hits on the Dr. Demen­to Show to his cred­it… and that may be almost all the cred­it he deserves! The inclu­sion of Sea­mon­key into the aux­il­iary mem­ber­ship at the incep­tion of TheFuMP.com quick­ly led to the cre­ation of the “Squick” label, defin­ing songs that are beyond con­tain­ing sim­ple bad words to ones that may make you ques­tion why you hit “Play” on that link!

Aside from these mis­sives, Sea­mon­key is an avid home­brew­er and cre­ator of “The Boobles”, an all-Beat­les/all-boobs par­o­dy out­fit that donates prof­its from sales of their music to The Breast Can­cer Research Foun­da­tion (www.bcrfcure.org)… and that’s got­ta bal­ance the scales some­what! Fin­gers crossed that God can take some jokes!

Jared Ringold

Jared’s appre­ci­a­tion of the fun­nier side of music began in 1985 when his younger form acquired what would become a well-worn cas­sette of Dare To Be Stu­pid by “Weird Al” Yankovic. Lat­er, Jared con­sumed vast quan­ti­ties of 1980s hip-hop, hair met­al, alter­na­tive rock, and pop cul­ture tele­vi­sion and movies, arriv­ing at a diverse col­lec­tion of influ­ences that would define his musi­cal career.

Jared co-found­ed the atom­ic rock cov­er band The Nick Atoms in 2000, pound­ing the drums and tick­ing the micro­phone through sev­er­al albums and live per­for­mances at MarsCon and CON­ver­gence. After the dis­so­lu­tion of The Nick Atoms, Jared went on to form the com­e­dy rock band Pos­si­ble Oscar. To date, Pos­si­ble Oscar has released three albums, per­formed at sci-fi con­ven­tions around the coun­try, and enjoyed occa­sion­al air­play on The Dr. Demen­to Show. Jared has also col­lab­o­rat­ed with musi­cal col­leagues such as the great Luke Ski, Devo Spice, Insane Ian, Sea­mon­key, and Worm Quartet.

Chris Waffle

Chris Waf­fle has been a fan of funny/nerdy/demented music since he first heard “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Eat It” at ten years old. As an adult, he formed the com­e­dy rock duo, Hot Waf­fles, who appeared on the Trav­el Channel’s America’s Worst Dri­ver, EXTRA and G4’s Attack of the Show as well as on KROQ in Los Ange­les. The broth­ers and their music are also fea­tured in the doc­u­men­tary The Peo­ple vs. George Lucas. They have per­formed in venues such as The Improv, The Ice House, were the Guest of Hon­or at Marscon as well as per­form­ing live with the likes of direc­tor Kevin Smith and Dr. Demen­to, hav­ing also appeared on the lat­er’s nation­al­ly syn­di­cat­ed radio show.

Chris has released fun­ny songs under the solo moniker, The Chris Waf­fle Explo­sion, and has col­lab­o­rat­ed with artists such as, The Great Luke Ski, Devo Spice, Ray­mond & Scum and oth­ers. After relo­cat­ing to Port­land, OR. in 2014, Chris start­ed an acoustic nerd rock duo, Going Viral (www.goingviralrocks.com), and con­tin­ues to blow the roof off of venues all over the Pacif­ic Northwest.

Paul Sabourin

Paul Sabourin is one-half of Paul and Storm, known inter­na­tion­al­ly and across the Inter­net for their orig­i­nal com­e­dy music (often with a “nerd-ish” bent). In addi­tion to their own live per­for­mances, they are co-founders of the geek-ori­ent­ed vari­ety show w00tstock, along with Wil Wheaton and Adam Sav­age, and co-pro­duce the annu­al JoCo Cruise. The duo’s orig­i­nal web­series musi­cal, “Learn­ing­Town“, debuted on YouTube’s Geek & Sundrychan­nel in Jan­u­ary 2013. Also in 2013, their song “Anoth­er Irish Drink­ing Song” was fea­tured in the hit movie Despi­ca­ble Me 2, and in July had their gui­tar smashed on stage by George R. R. Mar­tin (and deserved it). Their fifth full-length CD, Ball Pit, came out in 2014, and was the cen­tral item of the duo’s wild­ly suc­cess­ful Kick­starter campaign.

Permanent Juror

Dr. Demento

Dr. Demen­to is the on-air name of Bar­ret Hansen, the long­time host of The Dr. Demen­to Show, a syn­di­cat­ed radio show in the U.S. that fea­tures nov­el­ty and com­e­dy records. Hansen stud­ied music at Reed Col­lege in Port­land, Ore­gon and at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Los Ange­les. He first used the Dr. Demen­to moniker in 1970, in his ear­ly days as a Los Ange­les disc jock­ey. By 1974 he was nation­al­ly syn­di­cat­ed, play­ing rare nov­el­ty songs from the past and present, from Spike Jones and Tom Lehrer to Frank Zap­pa and Weird Al Yankovic. Hansen is also an avid record col­lec­tor and expert on the his­to­ry of record­ing who has pro­duced sev­er­al com­pi­la­tions, most­ly for Rhi­no Records. He was induct­ed into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2009. (from Infoplease.com)

The Dr. Demen­to Show is radio’s week­ly two-hour fes­ti­val of “mad music and crazy com­e­dy” avail­able for stream­ing on the inter­net. It is a free-wheel­ing, unpre­dictable mix of music and com­e­dy. Along with leg­ends like Spike Jones, Tom Lehrer, Stan Fre­berg, Mon­ty Python, and Frank Zap­pa, the Doc­tor plays new fun­ny songs sent in by ama­teur and pro­fes­sion­al singers and come­di­ans. (from Dr. Demento.com)

A doc­u­men­tary film about Dr. Demen­to, “Under the Smog­ber­ry Trees,” is cur­rent­ly in production.

Chairperson

Jean ‘Jayekitty’ Prior

Jean is a long-time fan of demen­tia music, even before she knew it was called that. While she grew up in the boonies bereft of a radio sta­tion that car­ried the good Doc­tor, she still learned many of the old stan­dards and expand­ed her knowl­edge in col­lege with friends in the Penn State Mon­ty Python Soci­ety. She’s been host­ess of Radio Free Gal­lifrey on Demen­tia Radio as DJ Phoenix since June 2006 (proof!), and has cheer­ful­ly abused her super­pow­er of net­work­ing to do things such as kick­start the idea behind Laugh­ter is a Pow­er­ful Weapon Vol. 2. She’s edit­ed The Medieval Vir­gin, a hard­copy mag­a­zine inspired by The Brob­d­ing­na­gian Bards’ ‘Do Vir­gins Taste Bet­ter’, and co-wrote ‘When the Dairy Farm Caught Fire’, a par­o­dy of ‘Old Dun Cow’ with Marc Gunn and Nan­cy Pearsall.

She’s also the Queen of Mer­chan­dise at MarsCon (MN) and FuMPFest with the nick­name ‘Rogue Leader’, super­vis­ing the awe­some min­ions who run Table 27. Her favorite col­lab­o­ra­tion is ‘Mom­my’s Bro­ken (Sad Kit­teh Ver­sion)’ with Chris ‘Pow­er Sal­ad’ Mez­zoles­ta, mash­ing up the clas­sic Worm Quar­tet short with Sad Trom­bone and is shocked that none of you clever peo­ple thought of it first.

Founder

Rob Balder

Rob Balder is a pro­fes­sion­al car­toon­ist, singer/songwriter, game design­er and web entre­pre­neur. Most of his time is con­sumed writ­ing and pro­duc­ing Erf­world, an epic fantasy/comedy com­ic about an obses­sive strat­e­gy gamer who is sum­moned to fight a real war. Erf­world was co-cre­at­ed in 2006 with illus­tra­tor Jamie Noguchi, and con­tin­ues now with the tal­ents of illus­tra­tor Xin Ye. Time mag­a­zine named Erf­world one of its top ten graph­ic nov­els of 2007, and Wired.com called it “Geeki­est Com­ic Ever.” The first phys­i­cal book of the series, “Erf­world: the Bat­tle for Gob­win Knob,” was pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary of 2011.

Rob also writes and sings com­e­dy songs, and has record­ed two solo CDs. The title track from his first CD, “Rich Fan­ta­sy Lives” was co-writ­ten with Filk Hall of Famer Tom Smith. It won the Pega­sus award for Best Filk Song of 2007. In 2009 he col­lab­o­rat­ed with -=ShoE­boX=- of Worm Quar­tet on a CD called “Bald­box: the Dumb Album.” Rob’s songs have often been heard on the Doc­tor Demen­to Show. In Jan­u­ary 2007, he and six oth­er com­e­dy music per­form­ers found­ed The Fun­ny Music Project, where they present new songs every sin­gle day, released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. The FuMP won the 2009 Par­sec Award for Best Spec­u­la­tive Fic­tion Music Podcast.