Posts from — December 2004

Karaoke! The word looks—to this english speaker—exactly like the scene that inevitably plays out every time I engage in the activity. It’s chaotic, noisy and, above all, fun.

You should know something about me; I don’t like people. You may already know that, which is perhaps why when you read that I regularly attend karaoke events, you scratched your head a bit. But no, the karaoke I’m talking about is private karaoke. In a studio. I’m not making this up.

Only my friend Hugh could come up with this as a suitable birthday celebration activity, and believe me, I was fairly pissed off the first year he instituted the birthday karaoke event, but I really like the way he does it. He found a place called Toto Music Studio nestled in the heart of Koreatown in Manhattan, New York City that rents rooms to people who just need to sing. So you see, the idea here is not about embarrassing yourself in front of a few friends and lots of strangers, it’s all about out-embarrassing yourself in front of a bunch of your closest friends.

And so, following the surprising death of my friend Bil, his friends from college talked of meeting up over the holidays to engage in this karaoke thing, Toto Style. When you get a bunch of former theatre majors in a room with beer, bourbon, wine, microphones, disco balls, blacklites, and a karaoke machine, you have, well, you have a cocktial for fun.

And what fun we had.

Now, I have a few standards that I have honed a bit, so I cannot accept the accolades my friends have been showering upon me for my rendition of Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” (though I do think my “Brandy” is better than Looking Glass’ original). No, I must give the Golden Mike award to Dawn and Joe for their “Gypsies Tramps and Thieves” rendition.

May next year bring more people to the party, and Bill Thomas with his frighteningly accurate “Mercedes Boy” rendition. Pictures are sure to follow, as Jeff was there with his ever-present camera, and when he wasn’t totally nailing “Blue Moon” right down to the last ba-ba-ba-ba and dang-de-de-dum, he was vigorously snapping away. I’m quite certain I noticed the flash going off while I was engrossed in “mommy’s alright, daddy’s alright, they just seem a little bit weird, surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away, aaaayahhhaayyy, aaaaaaaaAAAAAAA, AWAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!”

The pictures, as good as I am certain they will be, will not tell the whole story. Sadly, you could have been there and you still would not get the whole vibe. As Tim said, “nobody gets us but us”. I’m sure the same could be said among any circle of friends. That’s why you all need to find a karaoke studio and have at it.

Jeff, will ya post the photos for chrissakes?

You wake up on funeral day a jumble of nerves, hoping you got all your stuff laid out properly ahead of time. Laid out; now that’s funny!

Running late, you feel anxious. Gotta get there, gotta get there, gotta get there. 80 MPH seems just about right.

You arrive. You see all these faces, you know none, yet you know them all.

Your friend is in there. These are his friends, his relatives. His parents. There are a lot of them.

This sucks. You go in.

You think about how this is not your first time, how these places are starting to look familiar, how you know the procedure. You fucking feel comfortable here, you freak. You have the whole facade broken down to its component parts: the flow, the pink light bulbs, the earnest guys with their black suits they wear five days a week, directing the maccabre show. You watch them like you watch a car crash, wondering what it’s like to be them. The precious little guest book on a pedestal with the little light and the pull chain. At some point one of the earnest guys tugs the chain and it’s lights out on the guest book; he closes it and walks off and that’s when you realize you haven’t signed it yet.

“I’ll get around to signing that”, you thought. Just like you always said you’d meet him for dinner, you’d get caught up in a flurry of email, you’d visit him in his new home city. No, no, no and no.

You stroll by the casket, you take it all in. He looks great, for a dead person. He is not there; he is someplace else. But there he is. Hi Bil! This is funny to you, this show, this effort, this dogma, and then you look up and see the massive floral arrangement atop the casket with the plastic label affixed. It says, in a jewel-encrusted cursive font, “son”. You lose it.

Where do you go from there?

You meet the family! You talk to his mom (Cassie) and his dad and his sisters, and you simultaneously admire them, and hate them, for looking exactly like him.

You make a second pass at the casket a couple hours later, and say goodbye. As you get up to leave the casket you are almost tackled by another roommate and asked to be there with her as she does the same. If it weren’t such a sad occasion you’d file this away in the all-time-greatest-moments file. You will anyway.

You go to his sister’s house, where you hang with friends from his and your life and share moments and sayings and talk about the past and the future and the present. You plan karaoke. You do not trade stock tips or talk about sports, you remember him and discuss obscure quotes from movies and comedy routines.

You read a toast from a dear friend (and yet another roommate) who could not be there. You call her before and after. She called five times throughout the day. When we did talk, it was more laughter than anything else.

Bil, where did you go? Why did you go?

What a day.

Bil (yes, with one l) was a roommate of mine in college. He loved Stevie Nicks. He was a professional clown, with the big shoes, the red ball nose, the striped shirt, the magic tricks and balloon animals. He’d come home on Saturday afternoons, exhausted from yet another gig trying to get six year-olds to pay attention to him for a few hours, and slump into one of the many ratty couches we had arrayed around the living room/dance floor. He’d fling his feet up on the coffee table and let out a big sigh, but it was impossible to feel empathetic, because his feet were two feet long, got wider at the toes, and were bright red. He’d leave the clown shoes on, you see.

Bil dressed up as Maude Findlay for our Halloween party one year—no, he became Maude for our Halloween party one year. And when our landlord showed up in the wee hours of that night, threatening to call the cops on us, Bil/Maude said “god’ll get you for that, Frank”, and slammed the door in his face. (I realize I’m getting into reference obscurity of the Dennis Miller-level, but those who recognize the essence of the line are probably laughing hard right now.)

Bil & I and several other friends performed together on stage—in an improv group, dinner theatre, and mainstage productions at our school.

Bil was the only person who could compete with my farts. He always blamed his gas on the diabetes.

Bil’s diabetes was diagnosed while we were roommates. The day he was diagnosed, he flew through the doors of our house and demanded that all of us assembled in the living room at the time plan his funeral immediately. Of course we obliged. Dawn recalled the details today:

1. There were to be no small sausage finger foods of any kind
2. The casket was to be enshrouded in a dry ice/Rosco fog
3. Stevie Nicks’ “Stand Back” was to play whenever anyone got too close to the floral arrangements
4. There was to be a specially rigged “trip seam” in the carpet that we could use to fling undesirables directly into the casket

Bil ate a salad while we planned these things.

I doubt any of these mandates will actually be implemented, but unfortunately we will find out soon enough. Bil passed away in a hospital in Los Angeles this past weekend. I still don’t know if it was the diabetes, or if that was just an accomplice in some other medical conspiracy. I just know that ever since I got a call from Kathy this afternoon, I’ve been riding a wave of highs and lows.

Bye, Bil. You will be missed.

OK, what’s the deal here. This is not a drill. All of a sudden, my wireless connection at home, like, sucks. Blazing download speeds of 100 Kbps have been witnessed. Huh?

My wired PC still sees speeds close to 3,000 KBps on downloads, and my wireless laptop actually uploads faster than downloads. What in blazes is going on?

Hmmm.

Just in case you were wondering if those massive Chrysler 300s can fit on a New York City sidewalk: they can, but there is little room left over for pedestrians. Very little.

Earlier today, I was walking with a co-worker south along Madison Avenue, just going a block or so to meet another co-worker and help him out of a cab with a bunch of packages. Light rain had begun to fall, which always amplifies the sounds of the street. The sound of all those taxicab tires hydroplaning usually adds a whole extra layer of white noise to the usual racket of horns honking, people shouting—that depressing din of New York City.

Perhaps that’s why I never heard the Chrysler until he smartly tooted his tinny horn twice—when he was right behind us. On the sidewalk.

In fact, my first impulse was to ignore the horn like all the rest of them, but this one sounded oddly like it was emanating from a location right behind us, which as I believe I already mentioned, it motherfucking was. As I turned, I immediately saw the shiny grille of one of those big Chryslers. There was a microsecond of “hmm, that’s so strange to see that”, followed by “I feel like an extra in ‘Christine’”, followed by my co-worker and I reflexively stepping out of the car’s way—she to the car’s left, and me to its right. Before either of us could really say or think anything, the car was speeding past us, with inches to spare.

The car continued southbound on the sidewalk for half a block before deciding that the street was a smarter option. Problem is, the traffic on Madison Avenue generally travels north. Also, they had to run over a tree stump to get there, which caused quite a ruckus. Undeterred by the tree stump that sliced its way through the undercarriage of the new car, they shot down Madison Avenue narrowly missing a few pedestrians on the way, weaving through holes in the oncoming traffic, just like in the movies and shit. Quickly, it disappeared from sight.

About fifteen seconds later, I heard sirens, sirens growing louder and seeming to be heading our way. About the same time, four plainclothes policemen and one rather dorky guy rounded the corner in full sprint. The dorky guy was wearing a suit, waving a briefcase, shouting “come ON, let’s go get them, dammit!”, as about half the sidewalk’s occupants just pointed in the direction the car was last seen headed, our mouths hanging agape. Now, for all you out-of-towners: guess which one of the sprinters was the Chrysler’s recently-carjacked owner?

As we headed back to the office I asked two women who were closer to my office if they had seen what just happened, and the one woman looked at me, wide-eyed, and said: “yeah, we did”, and then just stared at me, seemingly awaiting further instructions. She was quite a bit freaked out, but who could blame her. Seems that things were a bit more lively as the Chrysler sped down 32nd street’s sidewalk on its way to meeting us. After narrowly missing these same two women who were coming out of their hotel—yes, they were first time visitors to NYC, welcome!—the car careened off the side of the Hotel, then into a van full of people, then hung a right onto Madison Avnue’s sidewalk.

Witnesses in the immediate area did not see anyone actually get hit. I sincerely hope these perps got picked up before actually hurting anyone. I got home too late tonight to scan the trash ten o’clock “news” hour shows, so I really have no idea how it all panned out. Let’s hope for the best.

P.S.
I get a D- for my cop skills. Occupants in the car? I think two, but don’t ask me if they were white, black, purple or green, male or female, dog or cat. Vehicle type? Big Chrysler (I had to look it up when I got home), grey I think. Tags? Yeah, uh, New York plates (I think), but I couldn’t name one digit on the damned thing. Dammit.

Well, that’s the end of that. After enjoying two and a half years of Discovery Wings Channel—all aviation/aerospace, all the time—the Discovery Channel has called it quits. Instead of providing more general aviation coverage to balance the seemingly continuous wartime/warplane segments, they are going all bombs, all the time.

Starting January 10 2005, the Discovery Wings Channel becomes the Military Channel. Kaboom!

By giving the people what they want, general aviation enthusiasts miss out on what was an exciting network with lots of potential. I thought that between the History Channel, and DSC Wings’ unbalanced schedule (and the daily news, for that matter), that we had enough things blowing up on TV? Guess not.

The appeal of DSC Wings was that there was expanded coverage of the recent SpaceshipOne flight (the first privately funded trip into space), programs about learning to fly, footage from major airshows, even a series on building your own plane—a concept that first piqued my curiosity on my first trip to Oshkosh’s AirVenture in 2003, and has become somewhat of a lifetime goal/dream now, after watching the process on that program (and here).

That’s all gone now. Well, it will be, on January 10th. Sigh. One more reminder that the will of the people does not necessarily mirror my own, I guess. Bummer. I only hope that many of these programs will still make their way onto Discovery Channel’s regular schedule. We’ll see.