Kaptain's Log; Kdate 102705

The Thursday night show was kind of a blur for me, maybe because I wasn't drinking beer. Too much Diet Coke gets me all worked up with caffeine. But I figured that was better than driving 7 hours Friday with a hangover.

I didn't have my camera, but Mark was again gracious enough to provide me with some pictures and little videos from the evening. I'll caption as best I can. I think the costume worked out pretty well, except for me being so damn fat. But it got a lot of use: someone at work borrowed it for a party Friday night, and another co-worker is using it tonight.

Singers included The corner table group: Dru, Lui, Claire, Cole, Leslie, Rachel, and Jamie; Mark, Josh, Wade, Annie, Robbie, Davy, Cody, Janice, Duckie, and Kelly.

Thanks again, Mark, I really appreciate the pictures and video. 'Til next time, hope ya'll had a great Halloween weekend and we'll see you next time.

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Karaoke at Zachary's

First off, the show ended up being great. It started a little slow but finished strong, in no small part to Powder's group. Powder himself was a huge hit, singing crowd favorites like "YMCA," "I'm Too Sexy," "Rebel Yell," and more. Some of the Underground crew made it over, they closed up early because of the Roast N Boast out at the Fairgrounds. The Ghetto Mansion Gang was there, Laura worked the bar, Dru made an appearance, and Matt and Tarina stopped in.

No pictures from Saturday night, but Thursday's photos, courtesy of Mark, are posted.

I've also got a new video posted. This one is Cordell singing "Heart Shaped Box."

I've also updated what's playing on my iPod this week in the link on the right column.

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Pictures, Writeup, and New Video will be posted Sunday

Tonight there's the Zachary's show at 9:00 pm. I have some photos from Thursday night that Mark was nice enough to take so I'll have those and pics from tonight's show up tomorrow. I hate that I missed Thursday's show, but it was absolutely necessary. Food poisoning is a bitch. Considering that I eat at Wendy's in West Point as often as I do, I don't konw why I was surprised that I got it. A health-nut like me shouldn't be eating at Wendy's, anyway. Oh well, so long as Calvin Klein doesn't find out and cancel my male modeling contract. See ya'll tonight at Zachary's.

October 22nd --> Karaoke at Zachary's

We'll be starting at 9:00pm sharp. Hope to see you there.

Everbody's going off the deep end

So last night I ripped about a dozen karaoke videos from my archives. This one is Richard, Chase, Moose, and Josh singing Loverboy's "Working for the Weekend." You definitely don't want to miss this one.

New Video

I've added a title screen and credits. This is Beau, Reed, and Lance singing "Friends in Low Places." Enjoy!

K-Cast Video Function Enabled

Our first two KaraokeCast videos have been posted!!!

Wade sings Ziggy Stardust
Reggie sings Santeria

You'll need to be able to view MPG4 files on you system. This compression algorithym allows the best quality for the smallest file sizes currently widely available. They're missing some spit and polish, production wise, I'm thinking that I'll try to fix that this coming week with a cool title screen and sound effect, a spot for a blurb about the the specific performance, a credits screen and an exit screen. "Sit, Ubu, sit" is already taken, but something along those lines.

If you have an interest in helping to record our Karaoke shows in still photo, audio, or video format for web publishing, please let me know.

I have a couple of really clear goals with this:

1. I want to do shit that nobody else is doing. People are doing karaoke, people are podcasting karaoke (well, one person, anyway), but nobody is podcasting a local show warts and all. No format is beyond consideration, whether it's a straight no-commentary production or a full-fledged radio-style show with commentary or an MST3K-style running commentary show.

2. I want to be able to hand other local acts and/or bars a working solution for internet promotion that costs next to nothing, so long as they want to take the time to do it.

One last note: if you're planning to do something outrageous one week, let me know in advance so that I make sure we can capture it on film and/or audio.

Ya'll have a great week, don't forget to wish Matt M. a happy 22nd birthday. We'll see you Thursday night at 9pm at the Underground and Saturday night at 9pm at Zach's.

Kaptain's Log; Kdate 101305

The show kicked pretty well. There was a decent crowd before 10, but few singers. Which works for me, I get to get my songs out of the way early. It was a fun evening overall. We had a nice large rotation from about 10:45 til Midnight, and lots of group sings, as always. All the photos are up, I'm still working on an acceptable video solution.

My milkshake brought lots of boys to the yard last night: The "Corner Table" was there, the "West Point Boys" made an appearance, and Mark, Skip, Wade, Claire, A.K., and the "Christian Coalition" also made their presence felt. Jello Shots were flying off the trays, there were a few Brandy Alexanders and and shitload of Bud Light consumed. Sonja was there, along with Brian with an "i" Waggner and Tami, "One Week" (the artists formerly known as "Click Click Click Click Click") and some new faces (for me, anyway) in Michael, Rachel, Margaret, and Jenn. Michael sang the hell out of some "Back in Black" and Rachel, Margaret and Jenn weren't slouches, either. Cole surprised me with "Zoot Suit Riot" and Mark proved correct in his analysis of "Yeah!": it's pretty damned hard to sing that song. And to think he was worried that I'd make us do "Sowing the Seeds of Love." That would have been easier.

Wade snuck some Sinatra in early before he and Jenna got slammed behind the bar, and Bryan with a "y" Roberts and Mike Meggs aka "The Christian Coalition" brought everyone a little "Closer" to god.

Thanks to everyone for coming out last night! And thanks to Neil and the staff of Vincenzo's Market Street Grill and the Underground for making us welcome. We'll be back next Thursday at the Underground, then we'll be at Zachary's on Saturday night. We also have a special show at the Elbow Room on November 11th (I know, it was on the 5th, but I had a conflict with Depeche Mode, who wants me to open for them in Atlanta on the 5th).

I've discovered that I can't caption all of the photos with people's names, so if you run across a photo without a caption and you want to submit it, just leave it in the comments (include the filename, please!) and I'll update it. Also, anyone interested in editing a podcast (audio or video) of karaoke into about a half-hour a week should talk to me.

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You know you're a dumb motherfucker...

If your stupid ass is too fuckin' retarded to turn your goddamn headlights on in the fog.

9 year-old completes Alcatraz-San Francisco Swim

That's pretty impressive. It's not such a long swim, about 1.5 miles but the conditions are almost never very fun. And for being 9, wow. I think the longest I ever swam at once before I was 10 was about 3 miles, but that was 200 laps in a pool for a swim-a-thon. I was supposed to do about 150 laps but they miscounted somehow and I had to do 50 more. It kind of sucked because they wouldn't let me collect any more money from people than the 150 laps I was supposed to swim. And, of course, I didn't raise anything close to $30,000. Currently the farthest I've swum is about 7.5 miles during an attempt to complete the Key West around-the-island swim. The total on that swim is about 12.5 miles.

I don't think Johnny Wilson, the kid in this story, was the youngest to ever complete the swim, though. Jake the Dog finished 75th earlier this year in front of hundreds of human beings during an organized swim. Jake is a four year-old golden retreiver.

Inoue Daisuke

For your browsing pleasure, here's an article with some of the backstory about the invention of karaoke. There's now a new biopic of the guy playing in Japan. Maybe it will make it over here with subtitles.

Inoue Daisuke taught the world to sing with the karaoke machine but never bothered to patent it, losing his chance to become one of Japan's richest men. Is he bitter?

For a man who lost out on one of music's biggest paychecks, Daisuke is in fine form: toothy smile spreading over the big, rough-hewn face of a natural comedian.

Wade Fest

Not really being a huge baby-oil wrestling fan, it feels weird to admit the baby-oil wrestling was pretty cool. Very entertaining. As was the rest of the party.

Kaptain's Log; Kdate 100605

Great night! Lots of folks were out and we got out first noise complaint. I think the resultant attention from the Man might have deterred some visitors.

Basically, there are some people that peg those mics even when they're turned down to nothing. I have got to get Bryan to show me how to conduct a good sound check, so that what I'm hearing through the monitors is what's being heard by the crowd. Right now I'm never sure.

Alex is going into the Army. He'll be an "Alex of One." So, since I can't do nothing simple, I organized a raffle to shave his head. Mark was kind enough to handle ticket sales, and Alex pulled the winning ticket, held by Tamara (who didn't sing last night, don't think I didn't notice). While Alex gave us his own very heartfelt rendition of "My Way" Tammy shaved off his mohawk. :(

Best of luck to you, Alex. I'm going to miss our "scorpions do/don't have heads discussions." At least in Iraq, most of the locals will probably realize there's nothing wrong from your scorpion tattoo.

Last night was also the unofficial start of WadeFest '05. WadeFest is actually a one-day affair, but people like start drinking themselves into the mood early for a Chateau Ghetto throwdown of any magnitude. And this one certainly has created a buzz about town days before it happens.

I've got a lot of pictures posted from last night. With the new photo service it's no longer a pain in the ass to take post a lot of pictures. I think it took me a total of about 15 minutes to compile this week's rogue gallery. So I should have a decent number of pictures from every night from now on.

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As promised, I have Katrina photos

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Well, I'm adjusting to no dog. Much as I did not enjoy having him here, he did affect my routine.

After unloading most of the furniture last night by myself, the last three pieces are going upstairs tonight and the truck is going back, too. Whew! That was tiring. But I'll have the place back in shape by the end of the weekend. One chair seems to have sustained some moisture, so I emptied about a third of a can of Lysol at it. We'll see if it kills the mildew smell as advertised. If not, it'll get tossed out.

Tomorrow at the Karaoke Smackdown we'll have the raffle to shave Alex's head. The clippers are actually in the car right now so that I can't forget them. I need to remember to get a piece of white vinyl to hang as a screen for the projector. I'll probably do that tomorrow on my way home from the office. Maybe if I wake up early and get my ass in to work early I'll leave at about 4:30 to be sure I catch the sign place while it's still open.

I'm working on another source of karaoke cd's since Phong Le's wasn't open. I could order from them online, but that still involves a phone call to see what they have in stock. So I may just find what I can from my ever growing list of things that must be purchased.

What a difficult two days...

Sunday morning I picked up a U-Haul, loaded up my parents' dog (who I've been keeping with me for the last week so he wouldn't have to stay in the kennel anymore where he was a hurricane refugee) and drove to New Orleans. The trip is about 30-45 miles longer now that the I-10 Twin Span across the eastern edge of Lake Ponchartrain is gone. The dog was surprisingly well behaved. I say surprisingly, because all week long it has seemed as though he existed only to annoy, pester, and piss me off. There was some yelling and some vomiting on carpets and some unwelcome sitting on couches. And there will be some follow-up steam cleaning. But he's gone, so I'm happy.

I got in yesterday evening and took a brief tour. The damage was worse than I expected in some places and not as bad as I expected in others. Now, this is on the West Bank, which did not experience the extreme flooding of most other areas of the city. Unfortunately, when trees poke holes in roofs or large portions of your roof disappear during an event like Katrina, the water damage seriously messes up your house. My grandmother's house, for example, will need to be gutted, and was well along that path when I arrived to pick up some furniture so I can finally pimp out my bedroom and fill up the empty bedroom.

So this morning I was up at 7:00 am to finish the job of going through my old bedroom closet to find anything I wanted to keep. At about 7:45 I had all the boxes packed in the truck and headed over to my grandmother's to load furniture. We finished up fairly quickly, at about 11:00. But still, it was pretty tiring. I'm glad I got the bigger truck. I ate a lite lunch and then packed up the furniture I was taking from my parent's house and helped them move other furniture from my grandmother's upstairs. Then I helped load their car with stuff they're going to take to Houston tomorrow morning. By the time I showered it was only about 4:00, so I decided that I'd rather be home tonight instead of tomorrow. This way I can go to work and still have time to line up assistance emptying the truck and hauling furniture upstairs in my apartment tomorrow evening.

Looking around the old neighborhood, I couldn't help but feel like I was back in 1979. The gutted addition on the back of my parents' house helped, since that's when they were building it. But so many trees are gone or snapped in half that the neighborhood just looks younger, less mature. Except for the buildings, which now mostly look like they've been neglected for several years. Things could have been much worse, of course, but the damage done was not insignificant. Almost every house in the neighborhood needs either roofing repairs or a new roof. Almost every house has some water damage, somewhere around a quarter to a third have some structural damage from trees. It may be more, but you can't really see most people's backyards to know if there's damage back there.

Some older apartments will have to be demolished, the damage is so extensive. More later with pictures.

Kaptain's Log; Kdate 092905

Thursday's show went very well, but I did miss Shelly. It was the official "Grand Opening" of the Underground, and we broke our attendance record again. Congrats to Neil and the crew at the Underground, ya'll are doing a great job and I'm sure you're going to be very successful.

After last week's picture fiasco and not being able to figure out where the pictures I upload to Blogger are going and how to manage them, I was lucky enough to run into a site that has the best photo publishing interface I have yet encountered. They've basically written a specialized ftp program that allows you to create albums and manage a photo album website from a client application. Your full-size photos are uploaded to the service automatically, as are comments about the album, captions, and so on. Visitors can view an automated slideshow of all the pictures or they can click through all the pictures. All of the work on my end is basic photo management and image editing. No coding involved. Usually I'm picky about that, but in this case the ease of use is so phenomenal that I can sacrifice the less-than-customizable templates that you have to use.

So you can find my Karaoke albums at the following address: Columbus Super Mecha Karaoke Smackdown Fever Photos. As of now, you can order prints. I'm not sure I'm going to leave that turned on. It's not meant to be commercial at this point and I'm not real pleased with the current quality I'm getting from my camera. At any rate, this will allow me to publish all the photos that I take at Karaoke rather than just a select few at smaller resolutions. There is also a permanent link at the upper right hand column of the blog.

Song books will soon contain title sheets and a set of instructions and guidelines that will include a disclaimer that makes it clear that attendees may be photographed or recorded by other methods and that those photographs and recordings may be published online.

The show was great. It went pretty smoothly, although we continue to have to stop singing at about 12:45am because they want everyone out the doors at 1:00am sharp. The problem is, when that doesn't happen, the automatic reaction of the bar is to want the singing to stop earlier. What this means is that for the last two weeks I have been unsuccessful at planning for the last song. If you are trying to sing near the end of night, I recommend putting in your request before midnight. Even then I can't guarantee that you'll sing. But it's almost assured that you can't put in a song after 12:15 and get in the rotation. There is a solution.

We start at 9pm. Not 9:30, not 9:15, but 9:00. I might occasionally start later than 9:05, but I'd probably have a good reason. So be sure to come out early, since the earlier rotations don't have as many people. Between 10:30 and 12:45 (about 27 songs), you will probably only get to sing twice, and sometimes not even that depending on where you are in the rotation. In contrast, between 9:00 and 10:30 (about 18 songs) you will probably be able to sing more than twice, maybe even as many as six times, depending on how many people sing right from the start of the show. Let me put it another way:

3 singers in a rotation = 6 songs each in 90 minutes
4 singers in a rotation = 4.5 songs each in 90 minutes
5 singers in a rotation = 3.5 songs each in 90 minutes
6 singers in a rotation = 3 songs each in 90 minutes

If there are only 11 singers (or groups) after 10:30, you will probably only sing twice. If there are 15 singers (or groups) after 10:30, you might only sing once.

So, don't forget: plan to be there early if you want to sing more often.

And here's that link to pictures, again: Columbus Super Mecha Karaoke Smackdown Fever Photos

Thanks for your support.