The year was 1984 (oooh, how ominous!). The place was Spokane, Washington (oooh, how ominous again!). The man was Charlie Schmidt, the cat was Fatso, and the keyboard was Yamaha (the keyboard may or may not have actually been Yamaha). Charlie’s boredom got the better of him, and an unwitting internet meme was born. It was 23 years before Fatso met the Internet, long after he had already passed on to the great litter box in the sky, but in 2007, his soul-wrenching performance took the world by storm.
The original Keyboard Cat (Sorry for the lack of an embed. Our embed plug-ins had a hard time with the video id on this one.)
Over the years, the indigenous people of the Internet (nerdicus maximus) have taken Fatso and applied his masterpiece performance to various sub-memes, such as “Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat!”, in which Keyboard Cat is used as Oscars music. The Internet is littered with imitations, duplications, and tributes to Keyboard Cat.
Behold the greatest of these, from Ron Livingston:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu0qtEwb9gE
-[insert FUCKIN’ A here]
