Karaoke 201

Last night's karaoke in Chelsea got me thinking about some more tech jargon for the casual singers out there (previously discussed here):

Broadway Joe (or Jane) - You get lots of theater rejects here in Manhattan, and they love "slumming" at karaoke bars. These types must be ridiculed and heckled mercilessly. We had some fruitcake last night singing "Lion Sleeps Tonight" complete with vocal acrobatics and an insipid, condescending smile aimed at everyone present. Not to be confused with a Ringer, a genuine talent revered and respected by all.

Good Mic/Bad Mic - Lots of places have two microphones, and one of 'em usually sucks compared to the other (too quiet, muffled, weird reverb, etc.). Best to keep an eagle eye locked on the good one to avoid shell game panic right before your song comes up.

The Mulligan - We had a few of these last night... you command the KJ to restart the track due to technical/sound difficulties or absenteeism (out for smoke, pissing, etc.). Crews are surprisingly cooperative with this.

K-Hole - Slang for a private booth, which are generally dark, stuffy, and smell like beer/vomit. Spending a few hours in a booth with less than ten people is a surefire way to induce severe depression or psychosis, especially if no women are present.

The One-Up - A nasty move where you sing another song by the same artist that someone else just sang, and you blow 'em out of the water. Nastier still is The Robbery, where you zip a song in to the KJ (avec $) before your nemesis (or friend) even finishes filling out their slip.

The Glaze - The surreal stare of the crowd up at the TV screen with the lyrics and video. Even weirder when someone mouths the words while someone else sings.

Bad Book - A songlist binder not sorted alphabetically by artist or song-- virtually impossible to find anything except songs by Justin Timberlake and John Mayer.

a bad day gets worse

Celebrity Rehab - funniest line of the month so far:

"Oh my God..." - Tom Sizemore after encountering Heidi Fleiss in rehab

possible runner-up:

"There he goes..." - Dennis Rodman watching Tom Sizemore walk out of rehab

Random Daddy Bullshit

Stuff I was thinking about tonight:

Is it common for a dad to obsessively eat his child's food while feeding him/her? I do this all the time. I did a search and found "Stalingrad Syndrome," but I think that's more about actual starvation. I mean, I'm really hungry when I feed Jr. his dinner... my job happens to be such that I don't have a spare moment to blow my damn nose, let alone sit down and eat a half-decent lunch.

I can't stop eating his macaroni & cheese, for instance. I regularly threaten him when he loses focus during a meal, "Hey, I'll eat this if you don't! I really will!" and then follow through and eat the rest of his bowl. I also eat his yogurt, cheese bread, and apples before he has a chance to finish. I'm of the belief that you shouldn't feed your child anything you wouldn't eat yourself (that goes for jars of baby food and other potentially nasty shit).

The boy's been on a hot streak with his after-dinner bath for a few months now-- lots of fun. He got these "bath drums" for his birthday (or Xmas?) that kinda rule. They make a wonderfully soothing sound, almost African... they remind me of Bill Bruford's Discipline-era log drum, quite frankly.

Anyway, I had a pretty dope "Biko"-style beat going tonight that had Jr. splishin' and a splashin'. One thing led to another, and I had a nearly perfect mimic of BB's "Sheltering Sky" lick going right there in the tub. Sounded freaking amazing, if I do say so myself. I almost segued into "Discipline" and started daydreaming about getting some guitar licks going when I noticed Jr. had the nozzle of his baby soap dispenser up his nose and was about to squirt gel into his brain. I made a mental note to look up the "Li'l Chapman Stick" on Amazon after bedtime.

The Alaska Diaries, week 9

Pukers Die!!! The Alaska Diaries [names have been changed to protect the guilty and innocent]

WEEK NINE: Workin' for a livin'

Monday (day 57)
_____ & I drove up to Kenai to get van fixed at Dodge "hospital" (dealer/licensed service station). The place is amazing! Car sounds a lot better.

We work in the afternoon. Play our Nightwatch gig afterwards.

notables:
Fire
Stone Free
Femme Fatale
Wipeout

Swimming naked in river again. Stole lots of stuff from club.
Changed sign out front to "SHITCORNS" and "BAKOMO". _______ pukes. Crazy night-- we stole a bunch of shotglasses and threw them around the van on the way back from the club.

Tuesday (day 58)
We start working at 3pm (still hungover) and finish our shift at 8am the next morning. Long time.

The Japanese cannery guys were doing calisthenics and playing dodgeball in the morning out in the parking lot. One guy had a stopwatch. "Fuckin' A"...

Wednesday (day 59)
Thursday (day 60)
Friday (day 61)
Saturday (day 62)
Sunday (day 63)
Worked double shifts every day except one single shift day. Got too stoned one of the days and drove the fork lift into the back of the freezer truck, forks up. Also worked in the freezer room in shorts. The regular freezer room guys were taking acid in there sometimes.

Looks like we're leaving tomorrow. ______ has to be back in NY in ten days to fly to South Africa. We're driving the equipment back ourselves-- no one else wants to go back in the van. Two of us the whole way...

week ten: the long way home

 

 

Manic Mondayz on A&E!!!

Gearing up for the biggest one-two punch in TV since the Beverly-Melrose heyday... the sometimes unbearable, occasionally hilarious, always exhausting combo of Intervention followed by Hoarders.

This 9pm to 11pm double-dose of dysfunctionality is the reality TV equivalent of watching Raging Bull and The Deer Hunter every fucking Monday night, assuming that each film were edited down to one hour in length apiece. Add the fact that A&E (sadistic bastards!) throws in a bonus episode of IV right before the 9:00 new one and spins a bonus Hoarders at 11pm, and we're talking about watching Raging Bull twice in a row followed by The Deer Hunter twice in a row (hour-long edited versions) for a total of four agonizing hours. I'm pretty sure we've never seen anything this grueling in the history of prime time television, unless you count last season's Met games on SNY.

This week's new Intervention features Sarah, an OxyContin addict who manages a massage parlor in Florida. She jerks off clients to pay for her habit, and supposedly took 8 hits of acid at once as a high school freshman! Sounds like a job for Jeff VanVonderen, the Albert Pujols of interventionists. Jeff always gets 'em off to rehab safely, and generally keeps 'em clean for good. Like they say about climbing Everest... it's not getting to the top, it's getting your ass back down alive.

Tonight's Hoarders also sounds like standard terrifying fare: Deborah's obsessive hoarding is driving her alcoholic husband to drink even more, and Jim the beekeeper has a shithole for a hive. More on this another time.

Natasha? Natissa? Natette?

As I started the first of eleven loads of laundry for the evening, I said to myself, "I think I'll watch the Knick game tonight." I actually said it out loud in the building laundry room!

I've been a bad fan lately. Knicks are actually winning games lately (putting their humiliating loss to the Nets aside), and they're doing it without any Nate Robinson at all. Almost starting to feel like a Marbury kinda thing... Nate hasn't played since December 1st!

I had the game on for about the first 3 minutes of the 1st quarter, and I started wandering. Say what?! Lockup marathon on MSNBC?! "Extended Stay: There Goes the Neighborhood" followed by "Tennessee Women's Prison"?! Maybe I'll just keep tabs on Knicks-Hawks every few minutes or so...

I finally came to my senses after a couple of hours, and stumbled back to MSG to find that Nate was not only playing, but was on fucking FIRE!!! Seriously, he scored every god damn time he took the ball down the court.

I sat there for a while with my jaw in my lap, folding Jr's shirts and (the future) Lil' Mz's onesies like an inmate on Thorazine. The game went into overtime with Nate still sinking everything he put up (except free throws, of course). Forty-one points????!!!! Off the bench????!!!! What the hell is going on???!!! How many "question mark/exclamation point" tandems can I possibly squeeze into a single paragraph???!!! Are we really having another kid in five weeks???!!! Is there a girl version of the name "Nate"???!!!

The Pussy is Free-ee (but the wax costs money!)

Hey, if you haven't checked out the Ministry of Information yet, you're a fucking deadbeat. DJ HSP aka "High School Pussy" aka "Home Slice Pussy" has undertaken a task as ambitious as the Human Genome Project (HGP), which I suppose makes him the James Watson of hip-hop.

No shit, get your ass to Mars and see what the man has to offer. I GUARANTEE you'll hear something you've never heard before and I GUARANTEE it'll be good. From stuff you already know (Main Source, Kool G Rap) to stuff you should already know (Godfather Don, J-Live) to stuff you definitely don't know (Tootskee and the Czar MC, Poison Ladd S.L.R.), HS Pussy gets 'em off every time.

SYR to LGA (live in-progress)

I know "holiday delays at the airport" stories are a dime a dozen, but...

HANCOCK INT'L AIRPORT, SYRACUSE
December 23, 2009
8:34am - Reported to my gate exactly 30 minutes before scheduled departure. There are no US Air employees anywhere. Screen says "ON TIME".

8:39 - A few other passengers around. Doesn't look good.

8:42 - There are two separate groups flying with dogs on my flight. Each group is headed by an obese older woman with polyester pants. I'm still not sure if the groups are related. The dogs in each group are yelping like the dickens.

8:46 - A smart looking girl just announced from her Blackberry that our flight's delayed at least an hour and a half. An idiot responded, "What does that mean?!"

8:50 - One of the dogs just escaped from its bag. One of the fat ladies chased after it, but the dog's leash got wrapped around one of the other dogs. Complete bedlam... I feel like I'm living inside a P.D.Eastman boardbook.

8:57 - U.S. Air crew finally showed up. The guy's announcing the delays over the intercom while fat dog lady #2 screams into her cell phone that she doesn't know when the flight's leaving.

9:08 - We might be the only gate with a flight in the entire wing-- there's nobody here. At least there's some sort of bonding thing when you're delayed among throngs of desperate holiday travelers; we're feeling like a bunch of losers here.

9:23 - I think I have a BabyRuth candy bar somewhere. Our food options are terrible: an Au Bon Pain with fossilized pastries and a vending machine. Maybe the bar will open soon.

9:27 - Hey, a flight just arrived at our gate! A fantastically gay-looking guy just strutted in from the walkway with rainbow-striped boots and a white puffy hat. Thank god... that's the first evidence of civilization since I flew out of LGA Tuesday morning.

9:31 - Hmm, that doesn't seem to be our plane. Then whose is it? Philadelphia?! We've been lapped by the next scheduled departure from our gate.

9:33 - Awesome! They just paged "Heinie Webb" on the intercom and the girl next to me got up and walked over to the desk! OK, maybe it was "Heidi Webb".

9:38 - Wow, the Blackberry girl is sitting and chatting with fat dog lady #1. I must be a complete prick bastard... I wouldn't talk to any of these people for all the tea in China. I mean, a crazy lady with a dog? She'll never be able to shake her off! Ever!

9:43 - At least I got to watch Sex Rehab last night before I went to bed. Phil Varone looked like he might literally explode if he didn't get some action ASAP. Then he pretty much came out and said, "I'm gonna lose it if I don't jerk off or at least spoon with someone" or something to that effect. An utterly compelling character.

FUCK! The damn airport just cut off my signal mid-post... lost some funny shit about driving on cough syrup and killing dogs. I'm quitting.

...and I'm back with live shit mid-air:
10:48 – Finally getting on the damn plane. Into the tunnel, down the stairs and out into the snow. Propeller plane in a snowstorm. Not sure if we’re flying to LaGuardia or Everest base camp.

10:52 – Might be Everest base camp after all… a family of small Indians are climbing around the seats of the tiny plane as I board. The stewardess is chasing two little kids around, yelling “No! No! Sit!” The mom and dad are equally as clueless, squinting at their boarding stubs muttering “D? F? 2?” Totally weird.

10:54 – Next wave of passengers is a quartet of Asian men in sweatsuit pants. None speak English but all are wearing headphones.

10:56 – The stewardess has the tricky job of communicating that we should really be sitting in our seats but since the plane isn’t even half-full you can actually sit wherever you want. None of the passengers except myself and two women seem to understand this subtlety.

11:05 – Out on the runway, props spinning, plane humming, KAPUT. We’re grounded for at least 15 minutes, minimum.

11:07 – Stewardess comes around for another round of admonishings: “No! No! No music! Sit!”

11:10 (estimate) – I think we’re taking off now…

11:32 – No snacks.

11:41 – “No! No cameras! No!”

11:42 – As I look out over the majesty of the Himalaya and the Annapurna massif, my mind wanders… nope, looks like either Scranton or White Plains.

11:50 – If this plane crashes, it would make a lousy movie.

The Alaska Diaries, week 8

Pukers Die!!! The Alaska Diaries [names have been changed to protect the guilty and innocent]

WEEK EIGHT: Tequila hijinks, hitchin'

Monday (day 50)
Blew off work again.
Me, ________, and _______ buy a bottle of tequila instead. We get completely wasted before gig. The Nightwatch hates us.

Notables:
Tougher Than the Rest
Stone Free w/drums [I assume this means that I didn't play drums?]

We jump in the Kenai River after the gig. Great listen to Soul II Soul in van on way home.  _______ and _______ wrestle in the back of the van and in the dirt at the cannery.

Tuesday (day 51)
Packed freezer trucks for work.
Had beers after work and drank bottle of tequila again. I passed out early. _____ pees in the attic of the cannery. We eat a lot, drunk.

Wednesday (day 52)
Packing for work.
Tequila AGAIN!!! i don't remember much...

Thursday (day 53)
No work today. Got our paychecks-- they suck!!!
I got dicked out of most of my pay, and so did ______.
______ and ______ go down to Homer. We drive van to Kenai to get bulk food and Jack Daniels. No water at all for the night.

Friday (day 54)
No water again at all anywhere! Can't shit or shower.
We hitched to the Nightwatch in Soldotna. Saw Kaboom play their set-- made fun of them.
We put pitchers of beer on our tab for the next gig. Changed the big sign in front of the club to "49% WOLF" and "BAKOOM." We hitch home wasted.

Saturday (day 55)
Worked in the morning with ______.
We hitched to Anchorage, which was fucking far. We played pool at Chilkoot's and walked around town drinking 40s. ______ and ______ told some creepy stories.
We're all completely bombed. I puked my guts out, then we ended up with some guys doing coke. We slept in a Wonder Bread truck AGAIN! We tried to warm up at a laundromat and ________ pissed his pants. Finally we go to Denny's and sleep on a lawn in front of the restaurant. The grass was fucking beautiful.

Sunday (day 56)
We wake up in front of Denny's in the grass. We split up somehow-- ______ and I end up walking over to a mall. We found Robber Joe's record store, which is awesome. I bought Mudhoney, a Defunkt CD, and a PE single. _______ bought a record by Can and maybe Big Star.
We hitch home, which is totally beautiful. Also get sore asses from all the walking and steal Prep H from the supermarket in Soldotna. Me and ______ drink a bottle of tequila right by the river behind the Nightwatch, and are totally drunk just in time to load in and play.
I play drums completely shitfaced-- awful.

Notables:
My Sharona
Tougher Than the Rest

I jumped in the river again naked and lost my fucking wallet with ID, credit card and at least $100. I pass out in the van totally depressed. Feeling out of control.


week nine: the hours finally come through

Nerd Alert

Holy shit! Ross Ohlendorf got a 1520 on his SATs!

I wonder if any other former Yanks can beat that... does this make Ross Ohlendorf the smartest Yankee of all time?