there’s a plan afoot to go out for karaoke friday — a good friend’s last day working on campus, boo hiss. (yeah, yeah, i’m happy she’s found something that sucks less than her current job, but still, sad to lose a friend at work.)
so i’m thinking about songs i know well enough i could probably not butcher them too badly. i mean, i know pretty much all of michael jackson’s “beat it.” but no one wants to hear soprano-niqui belt that one out, and i can’t do the tee-hees justice, anyways, so that’s out. trouble is, everything i know very well is either obscure or introspective or outright depressing and therefore unlikely to appear on a karaoke menu. i mean, i think the perkiest thing in my repertoire is, like, “ripple” by the grateful dead. which is not so much karaoke music. i could probably do a decent “hallelujah,” as i do it in the shower every so often and finally know all four verses correctly, but i’d have to do it a capella (not happening, no matter how many drinks are had) and who wants to sing depressing shit in a bar anyways? so. suggest me some songs, people. stuff i can memorize in a day and a half, that would be on a karaoke menu, and would not be either sad or difficult (i’m thinking BNL, “one week” when i say that, or that one blues traveler song that was so popular in, like, 1995.). get to work! (oh, and if you’re willing to do a duet of “The Internet Is For Porn,” totally let me know.)
i have been sleeping relatively well (key word: relatively), but i keep waking up from strange dreams wherein i am trying to fly out of the country for vacation, but i always forget my passport. the one where i drove to o’hare in the company of several others and the route to the airport took me over a radically changed mccluggage bridge over the illinois river (it had a whole lot more lanes, and apparently a customs checkpoint) was particularly odd. if i actually had a vacation scheduled i might not find this terribly out of place to dream about, but the only “vacation” i’ve got on the horizon is the week in late april i’m planning to take off so that i can move into my as-yet-unfound new apartment. so, really, i feel that my subconscious is just being a little bitch, and rubbing my nose in the fact that i can’t take a vacation.
i wonder what freud would have to say about repeated dreaming of a forgotten passport? probably something about a crushing fear of being found unprepared or something, possibly involving penis envy. well, i’ve got my passport exactly where i know where it is — so put that in your pipe and smoke it, sigmund! i wish…
- …i could raise one eyebrow at a time.
- …i could take a nice long vacation.
- …house wasn’t pre-empted this week.
- …i could play bass guitar.
- …i had a miiiiiiiiiiiiiiilion dollars.
early evening, blacklite bowling at waveland with r. did not break 100 on any game, which is very very sad, but bowled all three games with (braced) right hand, so, go bionic niqui!
from there to a little german pub in lincoln square, for to facilitate (a) drinking and (b) shooting pool. met Crazy Drunken Man obsessed with knowing if niqui was dutch, at first (wtf? hello, it’s lincoln square; if you’re obsessed with me being of any nationality it should be german!), and then later wanted to know if niqui was a “schmuck or a schmook.” /me was somewhat offended by some stranger asking if she was a schmuck. of course this was shortly thereafter followed by the bartender kicking Crazy Drunken Man out of the pub for being, well, crazy and fucking drunk. so that was all right. then 90 minutes of delightful relative solitude passed, with n. and r. shooting pool (and niqui not doing too badly at all!) then a guy with a guitar shows up. apparently there was to be live music shortly. 30 more minutes pass. another dude with another guitar shows up. they displace the jukebox. this was our final warning sign. and then…the hipsters descended. THEY CAME OUT OF NOWHERE. it was like there was some homing beacon for emaciated guys in threadbare shirts. within twenty minutes, our friendly local pub — which had previously had three patrons, counting niqui and r. — was full of idiots, apparently evenly split between ordering bad beer and drinks that the bar staff had to look up in the book, thus prompting a ten (!!) minute wait to buy two draft beers and get change for the pool table, while, adding insult to injury, niqui was forced to listen to one of them earnestly talk about garrison keillor and how he so sadly acknowledges that it means he’s “provincial” to care about tales from lake woebegone. listen up, dumbass: we know you’re trying to impress the girl with how you’re smart and sensitive ‘cos you listen to garrison keillor on NPR. nobody’s falling for your bullshit, so shut the fuck up about trying to make yourself look like a hick by intimating anyone from out of the city, like yourself, is a hick. all right? we on the same page? no one is impressed by your recounting of garrison fucking keillor! get in touch with your blue-collar roots some other way. drink a fucking pabst blue ribbon and get away. and the music! oh christ. someone save me from earnest acoustic emo guitar bullshit about how your girlfriend deceived you and now life is worthless, but you’re singing under the guise of “folk” music so it’s okay to be a tool. and worst of all, they shut down the pool table because there were too many people. the hipsters chased us out of our own damn pub. christ. if i see anyone in a striped shirt and ragged jeans tomorrow, i will not be held accountable for my actions.
