Tonight was a Karaoke bar review night, and I went with every intention of not getting up and singing. As I walked in someone was just starting in on a Shakira song, which I took to be an ominous sign. Nonetheless I met up with a group of Section 2 folks and, after a single beer and no coaxing at all, headed to the stage to represent with a rendition of, you guessed it, "I Fought the Law." They only had the Bobby Fuller Four version, which is different from the Clash version in a few material respects, so I got a little tripped up in a few places. As for objective vocal abilities, according to one witness I "sounded really bad."
Another curious thing about the song list was that the only Nine Inch Nails song they had was "Closer." I would think if they were just going to have the one NIN song they'd go with "Head Like a Hole," "Terrible Lie," or some other song that doesn't require the singer to want to fuck the audience like an animal. Maybe next time I'll toss back a few G&Ts and have the audience get me closer to God.
But the true highlight of the evening was the discovery of the worst pick-up act ever: A middle-aged, bullet-headed gentleman trying to convince the Asian women in our group that he was a producer for an upcoming "sequel" to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon called The Forbidden Samurai. Finding no luck with the ladies of the group he inexplicably started laying his rap on me, possibly under the impression that once he got in good with me I'd grant him easy access to the women.
At one point he asked the girl standing next to me if I was her boyfriend, which I wasn't, and she said so. This not five minutes after I had told her all about how this girl I knew in college used to bring my friend Bret with her to parties so she could pretend he was her boyfriend if she was being set upon by a creepy guy. Sadly, in this case, my friend's negative response only encouraged more bullshitting from the Producer.
Afterwards I had a little talk with the truthteller that closely paralleled the "When someone asks you if you're a god..." scene from Ghostbusters, only replacing "you're a god" with "he's your boyfriend," and instead of fingertip-lightning it was drunk and incoherent boastery.
But all in all it was a fun time. Happy birthday, Angela, you decrepit old crone, you.
I'm sorry I missed that! I really cannot imagine you singing karaoke. Oh, and after some discussion lastnight about the wounded Mattmobile we decided that eventhough the store-clerk from where you bought the duct-tape thought you were just trying to avoid bio-weapons like the rest of the stupid country, that is, ironically enough, better then the fact you ripped the mirror off your car while looking at yourself in a security monitor...
good call. one must always remember that there are varying degrees of shame.
I, too, am amazed and appalled at the idea of Matt singing. This, on top of the fact that he tells me he went DANCING last night! Who is this "Bar Matt" and why does he hide when I come to visit?
Seriously.... I wanna meet BarMatt (he he that is funny)
No one will read this because it's so old, but I don't get as much internet time as I used to, so I'm behind.
What I wanted to say is that it would have been really easy to blow a hole in Producer's lie by pointing out that Crouching Tiger was Chinese and Samurais are Japanese.
But you knew that.
holy crap, kenny.
i take solace in the fact that none of the people i was with -- including the actual asians among us -- picked up on that either. but still. still.