Karaoke schedule update

No karaoke this week. I will be spending the extremely dreaded Thanksgiving holiday with my family in what's left of New Orleans. Luckily, we're in the pleasant bit that didn't sit under 8 feet of water for a month. My itinerary includes fishing on Wednesday with my little brother's, my dad, and some other friends of ours; playing with my adorable nieces and nephews (they've been there for a couple of days now and apparently the house is LOUD); hanging out with Shelly and hopefully some other friends that I haven't seen in awhile; breaking the 2am curfew in the Quarter; visiting my grandmothers; and basically trying to stay loaded enough to not remember why Thanksgiving is the low point of my year.

I'll have new shit to sing when I get back next week. I actually picked up three disks yesterday when I was out trying to kill time before Harry Potter. All total I should have about 200 new songs.

Upcoming dates include:

• Thursday the 1st of December at the Underground
• Saturday the 3rd of December at Zachary's
• Thursday the 8th of December at the Underground
• Saturday the 10th of December at the Elbow room.

Lost Stories

I'll post about Thursday's show later today. Right now, I want to encourage everyone to read this story about Joe Casamento, a New Orleans restauranteer who died during the evacuation from Katrina. If it doesn't make you cry, I'll buy you a beer. I've been there exactly once, and it was years ago, after I got back to New Orleans from A&M. At the time, I had no idea about the history of the place, or about the story of this particular guy. Nonetheless, it's a really good story. To someone like me, who grew up in New Orleans, this is the kind of story you see and feel like you should already know.When you see it, and realize that you don't know it but should have, it crosses your mind that theres's a lot of other stories that you do know. And that some of those ended with Katrina. And it makes you realize that, not only have you lost things that you know, but you've lost things you will, now, never know.

Rock and Run Part 2

Busted in Great Britain in 1999 for child pornography, Gary Glitter served half of a 4 month sentence. He then moved to Cambodia, where he was thrown out in 2002. I've never been to Cambodia, but I think when they throw you out there there's villagers with pitchforks and torches after your ass. Which pretty much means that you're probably having sex with a pregnant woman so that you can get blown by her fetus. And that's wrong everywhere. Except at the Westboro Baptist Church Compound in Topeka, Kansas.

Now Gary is on the lam in Vietnam. Seems they found a 15 year old girl in his house and they're investigating to see if there's been any sexual relationship. The fact that they found a girl would explain why he hasn't sought help from the King of Pop, the Roman Catholic Church, or Arthur C. Clarke. Police, however, are reportedly watching Roman Polanski's house in France.

More troubling for Gary's future is that, in Vietnam, sexually molesting children can lead to the death penalty. Why go there in the first place if you know you can't keep your hands off of infants, especially when there are so many parishes places that tolerate that shit?

Ball-licious

Geeze, you've got a dirty mind. This isn't what you're thinking. It's an incredibly cool commercial, for the Sony Bravia LCD television. Best commercial I've seen since the Rube Goldberg Honda commercial. Why so cool? 250,000 large brightly colored superballs bouncing down the streets of San Francisco in vivid high-def slow motion set to a perfect musical backdrop. I don't want to give too much away, but it's worth the 55Mb download to watch the 3 minute high-def version. You'll need the latest quicktime player from Apple and a good video card to watch it full size, but it's worth it.

Elbow Room Karaoke Wrap-Up

Not a lot of singers, but we went for quality. The Corner Table Gang was there in force, Russ stopped in for a visit late in the evening, and Jackson took a break from his bartender duties to sing a few. Other singers included Chris, Jeremy, Adam and Haven, Danielle, Cousins 4 Life, Cole, Jamie, Alex, and Nate. Brian got into the action late in the evening. There was also a group that shook their asses to Love Shack, much to the amusement of their friends and the rest of the bar. Glad ya'll could all make it. Brian got into the action late in the evening.

My camera woes continue...I specifically bought NEW batteries for last night. Because I'm such a savvy shopper with mad skills, I don't require the shopping aids needed by lesser humans like stupid lists. Not me. I'm so talented I can walk down the battery aisle and just grab a pack of lithium batteries without even looking at it. I'm so slick that I don't even have to look at the package when I open the batteries, or even pay attention as I load them into the camera. So you can imagine my shock when I go to karaoke and opened up my camera case only to find that my camera STILL didn't work. Why? Because my dumb ass bought more fuckin' rechargeable batteries that have to be charged before they can be used.

I can be such an idiot sometimes. Take me out of whatever OCD routine I'm into and that's it, performance just plummets. But hey, it wasn't all bad. I did get a sex tip last night that I feel obligated to pass on to people who may actually have a chance to use it: energy beer. Apparently it's the shit.

Betcha can't watch the whole thing

The definitive video remake of Madonna's "Hung Up."

New Video - Simon sings "A Day in the Life"

Remember that you'll need the latest Quicktime Player from Apple to be able to view this video (11.8Mb).

November 12th --> Karaoke at the Elbow Room

Karaoke tomorrow night (Saturday) at the Elbow Room. 9pm sharp. It oughta be a good time. If you need to drink to sing, get there at 8 and start drinking so that you're ready to sing at 9. The earlier you put in songs, the more songs you get to sing.

In other karaoke news, I very stupidly forgot that rechargeable batteries have to actually be RECHARGED in order to function properly. So no pictures from last night at the Underground. But I'll have plenty from tomorrow night.

I got sad news yesterday...the store where I have bought nearly every karaoke disk I own is moving to Houston. They're not going back to the New Orleans area except for 5 hours this Sunday. Now, I'm not going to drive 8 hours just for sentiment's sake. But I am going to send Shelly in there with as much cash as she can get to buy from a big-ass list of disks that I have that all have songs on them that I want. I'll get them when I go back for Thanksgiving. So there should be new songs the last week of November.

Rumor has it that there's some interest in doing karaoke in the theater. I'm not convinced that would be very fun, though. Unless it was maybe a spring show that was heavily promoted and maybe had a contest component. UPN was pretty successful with the contest they just sponsored.

I'm also considering have a parody contest. Best Original Parody of a karaoke song would get a prize. Not sure how much interest that would generate, but I think it'd be fun.

Touched by an Angel Asshole

They were handing out free STUPID to everyone in West Point, today, and people were lapping that shit up like drunk lesbian Carolina Panther Cheerleaders in a Tampa nightclub restroom.

To the woman with the handicapped plates who was responsible for my 10mph driving tour of downtown West Point during lunch today before you swerved into the center lane like Stavros Niarchos behind the wheel of a Bentley, please contact me immediately. You have won an all expense paid fabulous Euthanasia Holiday Prize Package to Oregon. Be sure to bring a Power of Attorney form with you when you come to claim that prize, baby.

To the dick in the pickup that didn't have any who pulled out in front of me on the way back from lunch, a simple fuck you will suffice.

To the person on Hwy. 50 on the way home who couldn't drive faster than 42mph, a simple fuck you isn't nearly enough. I hope that one day, when I really do lose control of my rage, that it's you on the recieving end, you stupid fucking rancid piece of rat shit.

Thursday Karaoke is a GO at the Underground

That's right, folks, Thursday Karaoke is back. And this week, there's NO COVER. Now, I don't know if that is going to be a permanent change or not, but for this Thursday, there is NO COVER.

I have my camera back, and I'm thinking about experimenting with the video camera this week. Hope to see everyone there.

Video Help

Some, but all the video from now on, is going to be posted as Quicktime movies compressed with H.264. To view them, you're going to need to install the latest version of Quicktime from Apple. I've verified on a PC running XP that this does in fact solve the problem of not being able to see the videos. Most are going to be right around 10Mb for now, so they may take awhile to begin playing.

In Heavy Joetation

Here's a list of stuff that I've been listening to a lot this week.

Dance tracks include "More Than This" and "Vogue." I've got a couple of life-anthems ("Easy" by Cowboth Mouth and "Proud" by Heather Small" that help start my day right. R.E.M. and David Bowie make the list with a couple of old favorites that haven't been listened to much, lately. And my current fave tune by The Cure, "Mint Car," is on this week. I wish they had that for karaoke. There's also a little tune by The Format that I'm in love with right now. If you only listen to one song on here, that's the one. It's delicious. 80s favorites "If You Leave" and "Freeze-Frame" provide this weeks stay-young kick.

There's no Led Zepplin, Big Time Operator, or HB Radke & The Jet City Swingers on iTunes, so they don't show up there, but I'm listening to "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" by Zeppelin, "Are You Hep to the Jive" by Big Time Operator (this is my favorite remake of the Cab Calloway Classic), and "Straighten Up and Fly Right" by Radke and the Swingers that's the best cover of the Nat King Cole classic that I've found.

You can find a link to everything that is available on iTunes by clicking the link located on the right-hand sidebar. -->

Depeche Mode in Atlanta

Good show, VERY loud. You couldn't have stood in front of me and talked (or yelled) at the person you were with and ruined this concert for me, 'cause I wouldn't have heard a thing you said.

Trip was easy, parking was free, seats were about as far as we could possibly get from the stage and still good. Lights weren't all that, but they did a nice job on the sound and the video screens. The band (both of them) sounded really good, the sound quality was excellent.

The Bravery put on a good opening act, although both it and the Depeche Mode sections of the concert could have done with 3 more songs each. We were out by 11:15 CST, in a club in Birmingham by 1:15 CST, and back in Columbus this morning about 6:30. Definitely a good time.

No pictures, though. Didn't want to smuggle in a camera to the concert (too much trouble) and no point in taking pictures of the rest of the trip.

Thanks, Mark, for the suggestion that we go (and the suggestion we stop in Birmingham on the home). The company was great, glad we did that.

Mmmmmmmm, Cheesy Rotel Potatoes

Just typing that topic title makes me salivate. Think of it, warm melted Velveeta cheese and spicy rotel tomatoes mixed with boiled potatoes cut up like you would expect for au gratin. Oh, it sounds so delicious. Even more delicious than Scott Tenneman's tears of unimaginable sorrow.

How can anybody pass up a menu item like that. You get to the restaurant, figuring you'll just get the chicken finger basket with fries, because this place makes them by hand and they're good and you've had them enough to know that they're always good. And then you notice on the lunch special menu that they have Cheesy Rotel Potatoes. So you get the daily plate lunch and pick that as one of the vegetables and then you wait for about 6 agonizing minutes for the cheesy rotel goodness to get to your table. And then you see the waitress come out of the kitchen, and you're pretty sure that one of those plates is yours, and you're so happy.

And she puts it down and you grab the fork and you dig into the Cheesy Rotel Potatoes expecting an exotic belly dance of flavor to explode on your taste buds.

And then the ASS taste hits you. Because why? Because they didn't name the fuckin' things Cheesy Rotel and Fungus Potatoes. Thanks Mr. Mushroom Man and Mr. Menu Man, you fucking got me. 'Preciate that. Ha. Ha. Ha. That was so damn funny.

AM/FM in the house, ya'll

The band (they are AM/FM) overcame some technical and testicular difficulties and pulled off a nice show at The Boar's Head in Stark Vegas. The outdoor location was nice, with a tikki bar atmosphere complete with firepits. Firepits that, as Will discovered, will melt your damn shoes so that when you put them on the ground, rocks stick to them. Fuckin' HILARIOUS. That made my night, Will.

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vBlog Entry 110305

New Video

Carla singing "When I'm 64" by The Beatles.

So I seem to have figured out my registration problems

Looks like because the two sites are tied together somehow: if you register on both Site 1 and Site 2, one of the accounts seems to be screwed up. Only Site 1 allows you to delete your account. Only Site 2 allows you to use your login credentials from the other site. So I basically changed all my account info on Site 2 to something I'll never use, then deleted my Site 1 account and then created a new Site 1 account (which I can use on Site 2) with the credentials I wanted in the first place. And it seems to work. So when I get home I'm going to start uploading the already published videos and change all the existing links. The nice thing about doing this is that they'll be quicktime files in H.264 which means they'll download fast and be reasonably good quality.

AM/FM is playing tonight in Starkville at the Boar's Head (I think) so I'll be heading over there when I'm tired of messing with internet video uploads and feeds and links and other assorted web bullshit.

Arggghhhhh!

Welcome to Frustration City. So I get accounts at several different places that will supposedly allow me to host these little videos. But I can't get the shit to work. And there isn't any real way to tell if it's the site's issue or mine. I'll try again tomorrow when I'm a little less frustrated. I did make some progress on graphics, but some of those changes won't be implemented immediately. I'm also going to hold off on tonight's video until I get things straightened out with this new host.

No Karaoke Nov. 3rd

Sorry folks, it's not happening this week. It's a pretty simple logistical problem, and it should be resolved by the 10th. So look for us then.

Tonight I'm going to be making some updates to the way this blog actually works: I'm going to switch video hosts and add an RSS feed. I'm also going to work on upping the production quality on the videos I post, update the "In Heavy Joetation" iMix, and post at least one new video. If I have time after dicking around with all of that, I'm going to lupp my iSight out and play with it for awhile so that I can work on formatting video blog entries in addition to the little karaoke videos. Eventually the plan is to do a podcast and or videocast of the actual show on a regular basis.

Ya'll take care.