A more personal biography

I wrote this a couple of years ago to make fun of one of my compositional friends. They had gotten one of those "too cool" headshots that made me laugh and, admittedly, they knew it when they chose it. Think Glamour Shots for composers...soft lens, wind blowing in the hair, etc. In response I took a funny-pose fake headshot (which I'll not air hear) and wrote a new, completely fictional biography which she thought was pretty funny. I read it the other day and thought it was blog-worthy. Major bonus points go to those of you who can name the movies and comic book character origins I super-nerdfully quoted and apologies to any Schoenberg fans out there. Enjoy:

Maverick composer JOSHUA SHANK emerged on the scene in the early 1980s from the Canadian wilderness. Raised by wolves and not knowing who his true birth parents were, he wandered south until he miraculously ended up at the Northfield, Minnesota campus of St. Olaf College where he was nursed back to health and taught the art of choral music. Consequently, he began composing music before he was able to read, write or properly play the piano.

Officially adopted by Robert Shaw in 1986, he studied with the maestro while still learning to read and write. Once he graduated from high school (at age 12), he went on to study martial arts with Chuck Norris in New York City while continuing his musical training in private lessons with Leonard Bernstein.

Joshua holds many martial arts records including the fastest recorded punch (80 mph), fastest recorded kick (75 mph), the fastest knockout in a title match (1.4 seconds) and was the founder of the first American ninjitsu system: Shank-Ryu. Martial Arts Quarterly had this to say about Joshua: “His feral upbringing in the Canadian wilderness has lead him to success and heights not previously known in the world of self-defense.”

Joshua’s musical merits make him one of the bright shining stars in contemporary concert music. In 1997, he successfully proved that Schoenberg’s notions about serialistic music were based purely on the fact that he did enough cocaine to kill a small horse. Subsequently, all of the music of Schoenberg, Webern and the rest of the serialistic composers was burned and any living composer subscribing to “academic” music was forced to do hard labor at a ratio of 10 hours per second of crappy music they had written (all tempos at quarter note = 35).

Despite all this, Joshua has remained humble and true to his upbringing: “My wolf mother taught me everything I need to know. I owe my life to her and my littermates. Without them, I would be nothing.”