The Laundromat
I went to do probably a month's worth of laundry with the family tonight. My stepdaughter was reading aloud, perched on a counter with one of those rolling carts for a safety net. It made me feel poetic for some reason, watching it all. Here's the first draft, and I'm working on it.
There is a little girl reading aloud.
Dryers spin with reckless abandon
and a little girl with an afro puff
is sitting on a counter, reading aloud.
A muscular Latino man gestures emphatically
on a twenty seven inch TV screen
while captions run in Spanish
his co-star pouts, endless vistas of hair
cascading down her exposed shoulders.
Below, towels duel with socks
in seemingly infinite circles.
Words of Barbara Park
slowly work their way
through a five year old's brain,
sitting on a counter
reading aloud.
An older Chicano boy stomps his feet
demanding a fourth candy bar after
his tired mother finally drew the line
leading to stare-gathering meltdown
raised voices and judgements being levied
by people with no right.
Overhead the Latino actor
sweeps the big haired woman into his arms,
music swelling behind them
in soft focus lighting, irrespective of
dance between delicates and drawstring sweats,
moisture losing its battle against heat
while a little girl adjusts her glasses,
enunciating Junie B. Jones'
tattered talk and mangled messages
It's Thursday night,
Headlights of busy thoroughfare
blur by outside
like dreams left behind
and sure,
we'd all probably love change
and justice
and maybe, just maybe
for tomorrow to be even a little bit better than today.
But that's tomorrow.
Tonight there's tantrums and Telemundo,
towels and t-shirts,
and two eyes
looking through glasses
enjoying newfound power of understanding
what all those funny little squiggles mean
with every syllable
from her sweet little lips.
"The Laundromat"
By Hannibal Tabu
090924
I welcome thoughts and constructive criticism, thanks.
Playing (Music): "Down" by Jay Sean feat. Lil Wayne
Don't Worry, Baby ...
I am free of worry.
Not for any reason that makes any sense. As noted in Mark Morford's latest column, all of us can fall victim to slings and arrows of outrageous fortune so far outside of our conceptions that it'd be like a failure of gravity. You can save for a whole lifetime and either have your bank go out of business (FDIC insurance? Maybe ...) or your retirement fund get eaten by rapacious corporate fatcats or maybe the employer you gave thirty years to suddenly cuts your health benefits decades after your retirement. Maybe it's a gun-wielding teenager high on weed and PCP, in Columbine or Compton. Maybe some workday stiff pounded back too many shots at the bar after a long day and accidentally careens into your family of five, heading back from church. Hell, rocks from space can make their way through the atmosphere and smash you into nothingness. Whatever. We live, as the Chinese curse demanded, in interesting times. From a statistical standpoint, there is no absolute safety for anybody, anywhere, and there probably never has been.
I don't worry about these things.
Part of that, I'm sad to say, has to do with a certain degree of faith. For many years, I said, "faith is for suckers," and attested to my mantras of personal responsibility and energy manipulation. In the final analysis, I have to admit that "faith" is the final answer, however, because I believe I'm going to be (overall) okay based on my belief that following what I believe to be a path of spirit (with some unfortunate and admitted digressions) sets me apart. True, my belief is so certain as to be virtually indistinguishable from knowing, but there have been things I've known before, immutable facts to my father's father and his father before him -- a Black US president is impossible, the Red Sox cannot win the World Series, and so on -- that have fallen due to the simple factors of time. Sooner or later, anything can happen, and with proper motivation, it probably will. I have a faith in my "knowledge" which is just as easily, and in the last decade just as often proven fallible.
The bigger part of me not worrying is because I recognize the complexity of the system. To me, with my dangerously limited horizons and freakishly small perception, there seems to be chaos. On a larger scale, that chaos is a song with a melody I can't even comprehend. Babies are born and old people die. Electrons circle nuclei. Gases combust in the form of stars, spreading light and heat for millions of miles around. Water pushes ever so patiently against the cliff wall, knowing that one day it will join its old friend gravity in victory. Everything works, even if I don't see it or don't understand it because on a long enough time scale, I don't matter and neither does my piddling perception.
This used to manifest in my life through something I said a lot. My old, dear friend and sister Brandi gave me a book when I was in college, Love is Hell by Matt Groening, a collection of his bitter, pre-Simpsons cartoons. On one page there was a line that had on the left end something like "the unknowable mists of the past" and on the other end was something like "eighty kajillion years in the future." In the middle, very small, was a dot, and an arrow pointing to it, that was labeled, "your life." The accompanying text said something like, "next time you're worried about a decision, ponder this question: 'how long will I be dead?' With that in mind, you can justify pretty much anything your devious little mind can come up with. Go on. You're welcome. See you in hell."
This applies not only to my decisions -- should I have that donut? wait for this parking space or pick one farther away -- and my concerns. The world my daughters will inherit is terrifying and horrible. But they chose to be born into it, outside of delicate dances between egg and spermatozoa. Or, to go back to Butterfly from Digable Planet, "we're just babies, we're just babies, man ..."
Maybe I'm too stupid, or too jaded, or too broken, or too tired to know the difference, to not worry where I should. I don't know, and honestly I don't care.
So mostly I don't worry. It never seemed to make much difference. I'm pretty sure things will be, for the most part, okay. Whatever comes up, I deal with it. Really, what choice is there?
Everything is gonna be all right, whether you know it or not. Whether you can understand it or not. It's okay. Shhh ...
Playing (Music): "Why R U?" remix by Amerie feat. Nas, Jadakiss, Cain and Rick Ross
Just Like You
I'm just like you.
Maybe not the you that you're experiencing today. Maybe the you of some years ago, maybe the you of some point in the future. I may be dumber than you or smarter than you, at some point, have darker skin or speak a different language. However, the things that make us different, really, are considerably fewer than the things that make us the same.
I get up every day and drive to a job. I like my job for the most part -- the people I work with are smart and know what they're doing, and the few problems we have are very rarely ones we created (I made a minor screw up a few weeks ago, but I fixed that). I pay the rent, I eat stuff, I keep gas in the tank, the cell phone number rings when you call. Just like you, at some point in your life, probably.(1)
I come home from my job and spend time with my beautiful wife and hilarious daughter,(2) trying to catch a few moments of TV or have energy to be affectionate, waiting for the birth of a new baby girl. I live on a block with many other families, and I smile and wave and speak when I see neighbors passing by.
Just like many of you, I try to watch my money, but I like fried food (often take out) and I like staying up late. I've made some less than optimal decisions in the past that I still work on fixing. I wanna have better things for my family, just like you. A nicer car.(3) A bigger yard. Quiet Sunday mornings and the vigor to clown around with the ones I love.
I read the news and I shudder at the ravages of the economy.(4) I hear the squeaks and feel the vibration in the right front wheel of my car and know I've gotta get those tie rod bushings and those brakes fixed one of these days. I look at my phone and realize that even though it gets the job done, there's so much more I'd like to do and know I'm not running out to get the next big thing that'll do everything I want ... right until the day it becomes old and outdated. With every surprise and crisis that pops up, professional and personal, I keep going, just like you.(5)
Like some of you, I am driven by ambition. I've said it many times -- I want to be the Black George Lucas ... with better writing ... and less isolation ... and hopefully being thinner. In the words of The Bloggess, "I'm constantly scribbling on notebooks and napkins and my own legs and when I physically make myself stop writing my head gets so full it literally feels like it's constipated. And it's not even constipated with good sh** like poetry and kick-ass ballads. It's all jumbled stories about Cyclopses and why stealing toilet paper is good for America." I have a story in mind -- epic in scope, intricate in the details, and a tapestry rich enough for me to license and create for the rest of my life.(6)
Just like you, I get frustrated. Just like you, I get tired.
Just like you.
At this point in most interesting stories, something big happens. Michael Douglas gets a freakin' sweet rocket launcher in Falling Down. Larenz Tate starts looking at guns in Dead Presidents. The lead character makes some grand gesture or some momentous decision and charges the story in a dangerous new direction, often involving pulling triggers and body counts.
However, I'm just like you. Our stories are rarely that dramatic. I start looking for things I can do from home -- asking about agents and studios who need someone to write coverage.(7) I mentally push back the date I can get that new phone, wondering how long it'll take used models at lower prices to pop up on eBay. I set the computer aside when the five-year-old wants to tell me about something in her room that I probably helped pay for. I look for hidden bottles of cocoa butter or expensive pre-health-care-dustup Whole Foods salve to rub on a pregnant belly on the seventeenth hour awake for that day.
Just like you, I choose family. Like many of you, I choose solutions.
Like all too few of you, I choose joy.
I could have been dead probably twenty times over, from stupid stuff I did or from overambitious socio-political posturing. A slip of circumstance could have had me convicted for so many things, staring at some ugly guy named Ray Ray instead of this. Turn a different corner, and I could be covered in scars, reaching for pistols instead of tomorrow, every single day.
So how am I doing?
How am I? Really?
Man, life is good. I can't complain.
Just.
Like.
You.
Playing (Music): "Whatcha Say?" by Jason DeRulo
FOOTNOTES:
(1) = I'm well aware "eating" is harder to come by in, say, Sudan or in desolate corners of Colombia. If they're living long enough to see they're different from somebody else, they ate something. I'm working a simile here, people!
(2) = Maybe your kid's not as entertaining as mine. Maybe your wife's uglier. Or vice versa. Doesn't matter. Well, the chance that your wife's better looking than mine, or that your kid's funnier, is pretty freakin' unlikely, but for argument's sake, let's assume a statistical possibility there. For your sake.
(3) = Especially today.
(4) = You may not read the news, but when even Lil Wayne raps about it ("...and honestly, I'm down like the economy ..."), the word is clearly getting around.
(5) = ... because if you hadn't, you'd be dead, or in a shelter somewhere, and not reading this blog.
(6) = Oh, you haven't heard? You haven't checked out my first novel or bought a copy at Amazon? Haven't read the second novel either? Well, the new project, a graphic novel deal with Stranger Comics (and the new fantasy title from Sebastian Jones, The Untamed is in October Previews and comic shops in December) will hopefully have some stuff I can show shortly ...
(7) = If you know anybody, I'd love for them to contact me, my ability to read, comprehend and analyze quickly is the core of my weekly comic book reviews, more than six years strong.
Do you know what today is?
Six months ago, it went down like this ...
... I was blessed beyond compare, I was delighted, and most importantly, I was changed.
I can't remember what poet said, "if it didn't change you, it wasn't love." Well, as has so often been noted by my best man Denzil and in so many others, I'm a changed man. "Car seat in the back, snacks and extra clothes in the trunk" different. "The voice of reason and the less crass one" changes. "Planning to be alive to see 41 years old" sort of things, which weren't necessarily the case previously. Even "living north of the 10, driving north of the 101 every day for an office job with cubicles and everything" kind of alterations. It's a change you can believe in.
"You went soft," some would say. "You sold out!" I was told I couldn't be rowdy and hold a baby or someone's hand at the same time. Anybody who's ever known the aforementioned Denzil knows that's just plain not true. I'm considerably more dangerous now because I have something to lose. I'm more committed to a better future, a finer world, because I have little treasures anxious to inherit it. I'm better prepared for almost everything.
I have one woman to thank for all this, my blushing bride, the first woman to make me seem conservative and normal by comparison ...
... and -- for reasons I can't begin to fathom -- she's head over heels in love with me, leaving me alternatively stricken with awe and eternally grateful.
FTW, indeed. Thank you for our life, honey. Let's keep making it awesome!
Playing (Music): "Would You Go With Me?" by Josh Turner
Finale for Fatback
Yesterday, the employee known as Fatback was terminated from my day gig.
Who's Fatback? You'll have to read that for yourself as it's too lengthy to replicate here. Long story short = crazy, unkempt co-worker.
This was a sad event to me, because it meant the end of lots and lots of humor at the workplace. Pretty much everybody laughed at her, which was fine until she was in your way of getting some actual work done. Some final funnies for her farewell.- Despite the fact she didn't have more than a contract job, she was desperately trying to get the white "hipsters" she dated to impregnate her. Lately, she's been angling to adopt, theorizing that since there are lots of Black kids in the system, they'd be desperate enough to dump one on her. Remember, this is a girl who lost a piece of her own weave in the office, and once couldn't get the zipper on a dress closed, so she wore a sweater to cover it up.
- She apparently had an issue with public toilets, so she would try to squat over the toilet ... and often missed the bowl. Her shoes would frequently be wet when she'd return from a restroom trip. Two days in a row, there was fecal matter on the floor of the ladies' lavatory. No one can prove it was her, but the suspicion remain.
So what finally ended it for this lunatic? Well, her job is to take requests from people in other parts of the company and make them happen. Somebody was sending Fatback requests and getting ignored. Not doing her job was, of course, way too far. I may be marginally crazy, but I'm good at my job. Her? Not so much. So her agency called her at home on a Wednesday night and she suddenly became a statistic in the weekly news cycle. "Unemployment rates amongst the crazy and marginally competent are on the rise! More on that after sports ..."
I'm normally reluctant to post stuff about my job, but Fatback's funny transcended the workplace. Back at eHobbies, I hired this lady in this crazy zip code, one that did more explaining in emails why she wasn't doing her work than actual working, and in similar fashion the kooky truth eventually came out like Adam Lambert.
A little less whimsy, but a much easier path to actually getting things done.
Playing (Music): "Six Underground" by the Sneaker Pimps
"There's a two drink minimum ..."
In the normal course of transacting business, I was told that the long bartender from the Palos Verdes Bowl, Willie, had a heart attack.
My wife was quick to point out that this happened just a few weeks after I'd quit hosting Friday night karaoke there, weeks shy of my fifth anniversary.(1) Also, I'd received reports that Friday nights hadn't exactly gone smoothly since I left. He was always very particular about the karaoke and servicing the clientele. I don't want to believe that my exodus had anything to do with it -- Willie lived hard -- but it was an unusual coincidence in timing.
Willie, if you can't tell from the photo, is Italian. From New York. In his seventies, he grew up in the days of wiseguys and doo wop. He loved to regale me with tales of his "connected" cousins and his "boy band" long gone days as a singer . There was no credit at the bar -- cash only, or take that plastic stuff out to the ATM and eat a $2 fee. Every once in a while, he'd want to grab the mic and belt out "Teenager In Love" by Dion and the Belmonts, and heaven forbid somebody wanted to sing Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" without him singing along, "bop-bop-baa ... so good, so good, so good!"(2)
Many customers either loved or hated Willie's gruffness. The bar had a two drink minimum to sing, which Willie enforced with a vigor some felt was overzealous. Many of my regulars -- Eddie the Guitar Man, long haired Howie and more -- refused to return, tired of getting hassled to buy drinks week after week after blessed week. "If I come here this often, I deserve a little slack," was their rationale. Willie had a harder view of this -- cash up front. Every day. Money he had was better than money he might get.
Still, for all his gruffness and his initial ambivalence towards me (my rigid rotation took some time for people to get used to, and then became a gold standard), I came to appreciate him. We were a steady presence for each other, and I perfected my show style while he looked on, amber hops pouring into clear glass. I came to grasp his love for Sinatra, wielding my baritone through renditions of "That's Life" and "Fly Me To The Moon," his half-smile visible almost every time. He came to appreciate my exaggerated sense of fair play, never letting even my friends get extra turns to sing and never penalizing even the worst vocalists.(3)
He never questioned my decision to retire from hosting weekly karaoke shows. "You're a newlywed, Hannibal," he'd say, cigarette hanging from his lip as we closed down. "You've got this baby on the way, she wants you there ... it's only right." He was old school in a way that was often hilarious to me, because I didn't have to worry about whether I ordered my bottled water from the bar or got it from the vending machine.(4)
I hope this isn't an obituary. I hope he heals and has many more years of slinging drinks and puffing on cigarettes and rolling his eyes at people on stage.
Playing (Music): "Sing, Swing, Sing" by Benny Goodman
FOOTNOTES:
(1) = September 2005 to August 2009. I missed less than fifteen Friday shows that whole span -- business trips and family dinners. Oh, and that one Friday when the power went out for the whole block, which was weird.
(2) = He was actually not bad. The cigarettes had dulled his voice a lot, but you could hear the nugget of melody still there.
(3) = There was a lady who sang "Memory" from the musical Cats in the voice of a cat. Meowing and all. Her I denied. But even buzz kills like Princess (also known as Janine), Lenny (always polite, not a bad singer per se, but killing me with five minute salvos of Pink Floyd) and so on got their turns, fair and square.
(4) = I finally had to switch when I saw that the water coming from the bar's tap was actual fawcet water. No thanks.
How Exactly Does The Buy Pile Work?
Reprinted from MySpace
Last week, I got a really thoughtful email from one of the people who read my weekly reviews column asking about the inner mechanics of what's happening when I create it. I'll include the original email (he wasn't interested in having his name dropped) and then respond forthwith.
I read your column every week. Sometimes I agree, a lot of times I don't, that's how opinions work. I do notice you hardly review the x-men books at all. A lot of people discriminate against the x-men citing all the errors, inconsistencies, and huge backstory to keep straight. I'm fine with that. But look at any Superman, Batman, or Final Crisis titles right now. Seriously, what the hell?
My point is a lot of revelations came to pass in this week's Wolverine Origins, and I was little disappointed to see no mention of it in your column.
I buy between twenty and thirty comics a week, so I would love to know how you possibly narrow it down to an average of three a week (last week was 6 buys, WOW!) Also you have different categories: buy, good enough to read, good enough to mention, and total crap. So how is it that half the comics that come out each week don't fall into any of these four categories? How do you choose what to mention or review or omit completely in your article? It is true that -- numerically -- I hardly ever read X-Men "family" books, with Cable, X-Force, X-Factor and Matt Fraction's Uncanny X-Men being exceptions (I also read Secret Invasion: X-Men). From a sheer statistics standpoint, I probably read less than forty percent of all the mutant-minded Marvel product. I also almost never read (for example) Love and Rockets or World of Warcraft or any of the Battlestar Galacticacomics. Why? Well, there are a number of reasons ...- I center on writing about comics that either hook me with their premise (Noble Causes), books I've had recommended that won me over (Fables) or series where I have a strong grounding in the characters and/or story (Avengers, Justice League of America) where I believe I would have an interest in owning the comic if the story is strong enough.
- If I've read something for a long time and it's consistently gone badly over an overwhelming amount of time, I stop reading to save myself the aggravation --Superman/Batman is approaching that point.
- I reserve the right to like and not like anything I read based on reasons aesthetic, literary and financial as circumstances permit.
What does all that mean? Well, for example, there used to be a comic called Monolith,written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray. It was well drawn, well plotted, well conceived and well executed. However, I found it endlessly boring because I could not find a place where I could relate to the story. As a trained writer and editor, I was able to recognize the skill and craft of the work while recognizing that I did not like it. This level of differentiation was perfectly reasonable to me, and in order to not give a well-done piece of product a series of lackluster or possibly negatively-perceived reviews, I stopped reading. I never wanted to tell anybody that Monolith was a bad comic book -- there is no empirical way I could make such an argument. I also didn't wanna sit praising a comic that I essentially didn't like -- that seemed to take something away from my work. No harm no foul there. Also, while we're here, Batman books have many periods of inconsistency between them (and inside them), ditto Superman titles, and Final Crisis was a train wreck in slow motion. I don't deny that. I keep reading many of those to stay abreast of many things happening ... or in the case of Superman, always hoping that I'll somehow recapture the wonder the character used to inspire in me before I saw him as a self-righteous toady of the oppressor class. To be more specific about the X-titles, after reading the work through a lot of the 90s (and yes, those were admittedly bad times) it became less about things that matter and more about characters being killed for shock and resurrected to satisfy the urgings of deluded fans. Jean Gray died and was resurrected and replaced by a weird clone who had a baby with her man and that baby was sent to the future to heal from a techno virus and that baby then came back as an almost-fifty-year-old guy with a gun that looked weird and ... I just got tired typing all that. Don't get me into how many different things Hank McCoy has mutated into -- oy. So when you mention Wolverine, the man of the multiple overlaid memories, one of the most overused and overhyped characters in the history of sequential fiction, I either want him simple -- slicing and wisecracking -- or not there at all. Which is not to say, again, that I can't recognize the craft in things -- the "Old Man Logan" storyline has its merits, and is surely depicted gorgeously, and I even bought a standalone issue where he was trapped in a pit with a heavy machine gun pointed at him -- but I'm currently predisposed against the series involving "the children of the atom." I could, say, slash on that sort of book in every column. Conversely, I could stop reading the work when there's such a preponderance of evidence that its not gonna work for me. X-Infernus? Wolverine: Origins? X-Men: Noir? I'm cool. There's no need for me to keep bashing things like that and there's no need for those comics to keep getting the Hannibal Treatment. Right? I don't read everything -- I can't, there's not enough time and I'm not cognizant enough to speak on what's happening with any authority. Anyway, on to the next question. "How do I narrow it down?" Well, I look at the weekly new releases on the website of heartless national monopoly Diamond Comics Distributors and read through to see what I deeply suspect I'll enjoy before I even get in the car. I know my tastes, and I'm very picky. Once I've found what I want, I copy and paste the names and issue numbers of what I want into Palm Desktop and synchronize (along with every title I plan to read) the whole shebang to my Treo 680. I make the hard Wednesday night drive from Pasadena to Culver City and go through the store, grabbing everything on my list. If I have time, I look through the "new comics" box and find stuff I may have missed ( Transformers comics often slip through), the read. How do I narrow it down? It's easy, most of the time. If I don't have a vocal, clear positive reaction at least twice, I am not buying the comic. Most weeks, so many books fail to accomplish that, it's normally a slaughterhouse. "Good enough" isn't normally good enough for me. I don't want to spend a lot of money, I don't find most books entertaining enough to pay for (I use the model of TV -- I watch much more for free than I would pay for, even given the Ax Men and Philly Cream Cheese commercials that run on Hulu) so that means just getting things that really do it for me. That was a longer answer than I planned, but hopefully it did the job. Right, then. Watching (Hulu): The Simpsons "How The Test Was Won" (it's really a terrible episode)
"... when the rain washes you clean you'll know ..."
Reprinted from MySpace
Cory Daye Desmond liked beer.
She liked big amber glasses of beer, and she liked to sing "Black Velvet" by Alannah Myles. She was a lean white girl who -- unbeknownst to me -- had a degree in criminal justice. I didn't know that because as far as I knew, she was a bartender and regular customer at my bar.
She never came early. Probably showing up after her shifts, she always showed up no earlier than 11PM and often much later, too late to get a song in. She hung out with a really rowdy girl named Britney who I saw suck face with one of my bar's bartenders on a table with everybody cheering. Britney was the one who got all the attention, while Cory played the background.
Once she came up to me confused about what to sing, because she'd had some problem with a guy. She didn't want to do anything slow, fearing the upbeat crowd would turn on her. I wagged my finger in her face. "Sing what makes you happy," I told her. She did, a ballad that let her rich contralto/mezzo-soprano voice shine, and people cheered even as she worked through her pain.
She was quick to smile and laughed like a big ol' guy, but I always thought there was a dark cloud hanging around her temples. I never shared many words with her -- she didn't sing much and I don't stray too far from my mixer -- but I could tell there was nothing really wrong with her. She wasn't a jerk, she wasn't a sloppy drunk, she wasn't a pest. For me as a karaoke host, that's good enough to get a favorable impression in my mind.
She wasn't exactly a regular at Sully's, but she'd been there often enough in my three or so years of hosting the Thursday night show that I knew her name when she showed and I recognized her by sight. I came to think of her like I'd think of Red or Q or any of the people who've come to be the regular cast members in the show's credits in my mind. So when Britney came in on Thursday and told me that Cory's body had been found in a roadside snowbank in the San Bernardino hills it kind of shook me. She looked younger than her 28 years, a virtual babe to my gray haired perspective. She was apparently bludgeoned to death, the victim of blunt force trauma. From reports, she'd left work and was on her way to visit Britney after their shifts ended on Valentine's night.
Britney sang "Black Velvet" for Cori, remembering how disappointed the girl would be if someone had sang it before she arrived. The next chance I got, I did "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday," and several people came up to me to thank me for it. Apparently, she had many friends and fans.
Cori was trying to find her way like many people in their twenties. She never got a chance to figure out which way to go. I don't know anything about the crime, about why somebody would snuff her out like a scented candle, about what happened between the video footage of her walking, alone, out of the Redondo Beach bar where she worked at 2:30AM. I know that bad things happen, and I'm sorry for her loss. Anedge hirak Cori Daye Desmond. Listening (Music): "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac
The Reason (or "The Black Bag In The Closet")
Two interesting things happened recently, oddly related to one another.
For DJing at karaoke shows and private parties, I use a fairly clunky old HP laptop running either PCDJ Red or Virtual DJ. I can mix but I'm often too indifferent/underpaid to do so. I've run a lot of shows, and I used to keep "the DJ machine" fairly near me at all times, just in case I needed to set the party off at the drop of a dime, baby.(1)
The other night, I put my familiar black DJing laptop bag in the back of the office closet. I did it without a lot of fanfare -- that closet's already jam packed with too much stuff, and for a split second I debated taking it all the way to my storage until I remembered that I needed to clean up the music database -- and really kind of closed a door on a previously pretty big part of my life. Quietly, without anyone around, without anyone noticing or any discussion.
I started working as a karaoke host in December of 2003, going from "bumper music" on an iPod to running in iTunes to a fully dedicated standalone computer. I loved the work, I loved discovering new music, I loved the feeling I got when a crowd really started to have a good time and get wild. The control of it was intoxicating, and to be honest, I never thought I was only "pretty good."(3) I tried to stay current on music, I tried to pay attention to what people wanted, but I'm nowhere near as good a DJ as, say, my USC classmate DJ Kaleem (I remember when he was "DJ Assault").(3) I was, I believe, one of the best karaoke hosts I had ever seen,(4) due to my technical abilities and general show knowledge, and I loved what I did.
That said, it's over. I mean done. The owner of one of the bars I worked at still calls, desperate to get me back in any capacity, and I can't. Why?
Last night, I saw my new little girl, inside my wife's stomach, not only respond to the sound of my voice but move towards it. The taut flesh of the pregnant belly showed it clearly, and when I put my hand there, she reached for me. That never happened before.
Wow.
I've seen some stuff in my life. Physics-defying things. Things that are illegal in most of the South. All kinds of things many people probably don't even have the mental hardware to comprehend. But I've never known a sense of wonder like I did when I saw that.
"Ha ha, Hannibal, you've gone soft, you're just an old husband now, ha ha." Laugh it up, fuzzball. I've got something so cool that I never even imagined anything like that. The connection I feel to this new life, this daughter-to-be, defies wordsmithing. (5) Catching myself singing Creed's "With Arms Wide Open" under my breath as I walk from place to place.(6) Putting together the little speeches in my head about this event to come or that one.
It's got my wig completely twisted, and I love it. So yeah, "every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end," and I feel good about it. I went out on top, and I'm enjoying something so much more rewarding than the boozy handshakes and cheering of even the best bar in the south bay.(7) I have something now that pushes me towards my office job with renewed vigor and determination, happy to provide for one more smiling face in my home.
So the dust can settle on that black bag a bit, and maybe I won't recognize every single song on every single radio station anymore. I think that's just fine. Just fine, indeed.
Playing (Music): "Walking On The Moon" by The-Dream feat. Kanye West
FOOTNOTES
(1) = I'm not mad if you don't get the reference. Mostly.
(2) = Seriously, Kaleem's a killer. If I'd have known what a musical monster he would have been when he showed up interviewing for a job at USC's Annual Fund Phone Program, trying desperately to seem like he wasn't crazy, I'd ... well, I don't know what would have happened, but it probably would have been more interesting, that's for certain! Easily one of the best DJs in hip hop today, maybe ever.
(3) = I knew what I could do at a show, and my skill level. However, I knew less skillful karaoke hosts with more popular and profitable shows. People who weren't as good as me who could develop bigger crowds and make more money for bars. I didn't have a desire to develop the skills they had at promoting or ingratiating themselves with people to make my own shows bigger. I focused on what I was good at -- sound, wires, music selections, technical issues -- and let everything else work or not based on fate.
(4) = I learned from some of the best -- Dana Walker, Mikey de Lara, Michelle Velasco -- and I believe incorporated all their lessons into an even better hybrid. There are, however, two hosts I feel are better than me. Number 2 is Aaron, who ran karaoke at Miyagi's on Sunset. He's a beast -- slammin' music, great sound, brisk paced show. The only one better -- a man who can literally do it all, from working the crowd to concert-grade sound to fantastic charisma and technical skills -- is Levi Strauss (stage name, probably) from Blue Jeans and Black Tie Entertainment. If I could do half the show he does every Sunday at Henry's in Gaslamp, I could be a freakin' legend. I don't have the ability to be social and rock the show the same way, I don't have the energy he has, I don't have the focus. It's less jealousy and more awe, honestly. If Fatman Scoop was a karaoke host, could sing almost anything, had Kaleem spinning in between songs and had three times more energy, he'd be Levi. Still, that said, after the top ten or eleven hosts I've seen, most other shows are pretty limp.
(5) = I used to believe I could have something to say about everything. This ... this is more than my verbal ability can handle. Seriously. I'm so grateful to my wife for the opportunity here.
(6) = I wiggle some of the lyrics. I'm having a girl, for example.
(7) = The night of my retirement, I found out that Sully's had been named "the best bar in the south bay" by The Daily Breeze. In between the next two songs, I told the crowd, "The Daily Breeze thinks this is the best bar in the south bay! We already knew that! This is the best bar in the south bay, and that has nothing to do with me. It has to do with you, and you, and that guy over there, and those hot girls at the bar! This is Sully's, y'all, you better believe it!" The crowd was whipped into an appropriate frenzy, and I felt good. Not "see your unborn daughter respond to your voice and touch for the first time" good, but pretty good nonetheless.
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