Sheesh! Holidays …
You know how it is: you walk into a room and something in your mind goes 'Hmm …'.
Next thing you know you're driving back from the hardware store with several tons of maple and steel and for the next few days half the house looks like a building site …
So yeah; I kinda forgot about the computer.
And I was so happy dicking around with my power tools and rearranging furniture and a few thousand books that I didn't get around to writing my assignment.
No worries, though, as Vanda did hers, and what a doozy it is:
Vanda's 'Desert Wind'
I'm not going to spoil it for you; just go read it. It is definitely worth your while and will leave you (at least it did me) with a warm glow and a day-long urge to giggle.
And, 'mea culpa,' I omitted on first posting this to include Lulu's marvellous story which she wrote so quickly it seems ages ago that I first enjoyed it:
Lulu's 'The Morning After'
Priceless. Hilarious. Gross to the point of barf-out-loud funny.
By the way:
Apologies for not visiting anyone's sites over the past week. Same excuse as above.
Oh, and Happy New Year if you're into that kind of thing.
On this last night of the year I'll be going to bed early with a book as usual. My longest-suffering Blogville neighbours will know why, but in case you don't, here's a somewhat sweary reminder from an end of year post a couple of years ago to explain why I shall not be partaking of drunken revelry tonight (nor any other New Year's Eve as long as I live):
You can consider this my 500 Words assignment, even though it's too long.
"The one thing I shall NOT be doing is going out tonight.
Between the ages of nine and forty-five, I spent every single Old Year's Night on stage (musicians always call it Old Year's Night, rather than New Year's Eve because New Year's Eve suggests hope and Old Year's Nights are festering pits of hopeless black despair and miserable fucking despondency) and believe me, there's no better aversion therapy than that.
Here's what a typical Old Year's Night used to entail for Old Dive:
Stay sober all day (and all night)!
Force several pounds of pasta down my gullet at noon because I'll have bugger all else to eat until breakfast time next year.
Pack up all the gear at lunchtime and drive to the studio (or wherever, depending on the year). Unpack all the gear and load it - tons of it - into the truck/van/bus.
Drive for hours to some posh fucking hotel.
Carry all the gear up endless flights of stairs and down miles of dingy corridors, then set it all up and spend a couple of hours soundchecking everything (including such immeasurable joys as listening to the drummer hit the snare drum once a second for five minutes while Rod the sound man gets the fucking levels right).
Sit cramped together in some miserable fucking hotel room, stone cold sober, munching crap snacks and drinking crap hotel coffee and watching suicidally dire crap TV from five in the afternoon (when we have to be out of the ballroom so they can set the tables) until eleven at night, by which time we are so wired from the coffee and so insane from the boredom that we are all ready to kill someone, possibly each other.
Try to resist the voices in my head telling me to KILL, KILL, KILL all of those bastards in the ballroom who have spent the last few hours stuffing their fat fucking faces with umpteen courses of gourmet food and guzzling gallons of wine while we've been arguing over a plastic-wrapped packet of three fucking stale hotel biscuits.
Get changed into fucking dickie bows and penguin suits. Great under stage lights if you want to sweat off a few stone or lose consciousness.
Go on stage and play (SOBER) until three in the fucking morning, during which, for the mercifully brief part around midnight we will inevitably end up backing some fucking washed-up chart has-been who thinks they're God, can't sing live and is out of his or her gourd on cocaine, all the while having to stare (and SMILE) at disgusting fucking yuppie drunks in party hats who are ripped to the tits, their sweaty red pig faces as ugly as sin, pawing and slobbering over equally rat-arsed pretty girls you'll never, ever get to paw and slobber over, who are trying pathetically to dance and falling all over the monitor speakers (I hate you all forever).
Pull fucking party poppers, streamers and binge-drunk girls off hot amps before they catch fire.
Smile through it all (the worst and hardest part) while every moment we are aching for it all to end and praying for the Apocalypse to spare us another moment's suffering.
Make our miserable fucking way back upstairs, shower off the sweat, stink and filth and change again, then wait hours for the drunks to stop vomiting and passing out and get the fuck out of the ballroom before spending a soul-destroying hour breaking down all the gear, carting it back down endless stairs and corridors and out into the freezing night and packing it away.
Drive back to the studio, soberly waving at all the traffic police who are just as fucking miserable at having to work all night on the set of "Night Of The Living Drunks".
Repack all the stuff in our cars as dawn breaks and our fingers freeze off and the world's biggest and most miserable fucking headache settles in to stay for the day.
Drive home, sober and homicidal at breakfast time vowing NEVER to do it again.
(er … I'm not sounding just a teensy bit bitter here, am I? … Yes? … Good!) …
Much to the falling-over amazement of all my session musician buddies (I'll think of your suffering as I snuggle into my pillow, you poor sods), I made a break for it at forty-six and have been on the run ever since, refusing all offers to play another Old Year's Night, no matter how desperate and cash-laden they have been (and they have been).
The upshot of which is that for the past few years, my Old Year's Nights have been thoroughly relaxing and I've been asleep well before midnight.
Tonight I will be doing the same again. I'll watch a DVD after dinner, then take a book and a scotch to bed around nine. Ahhh … bliss …
So now you know.
Decades of aversion therapy have left me with a deeply ingrained and truly seething hatred of New Year's Eve and all who sail in her.
I have stood, year after year, decade after decade, soberly watching with mounting disgust and abhorrence the binge-drunk antics of New Year's Eve revellers and feeling the deep hatred and bile-bitter loathing settle heavily on my cold black heart."
Enjoy tonight if you must, but spare a thought for those poor fuckers up on stage. They are not smiling, they are grimacing.
20 comments:
LOL..My brother's working tonight wearing his caricaturist hat (as opposed to his drummer hat). I'll have to ask him if he shares your love of old year's night.
have a great night, sugar! i'm doing what i do every new year's eve - celebrating my birthday at home! xoxoxoxoxo
Did the Old Year's Night gig just the once. If I had done more it wouldn't have been a novelty, so I think I'll leave it that way. Have a blissful one indeed. What's the DVD?
Dive, you and I will be spending the evening doing exactly the same thing, just on opposite sides of the earth! I am looking forward to being alone, peaceful, sipping enthusiastically on a lovely glass of CabSav, lost in a great book and snuggled down before the tick of midnight. Cheers my friend!
XXOO
Pru
Happy New Year Dive.
Kisses for Phil, tell him I miss him.
Happy New Year blogville residents.
xox
Lulu: Good luck to your brother. I pity any musician (or caricaturist) who gets stuck with Old Year's Night watching everyone else enjoying themselves.
Savannah: Have a wonderful evening!
xoxoxoxoxo
Istvanski: Happy New Year! Good to see you again. You are a wise man indeed for giving it up after one year. The money's usually too good for people to turn down but after a few decades even that begins to pall.
THe DVD will be one of several dozen I've bought during the year but not had time to watch.
Prudence: Good to hear there are still a few sane people left in the world. Happy New Year!
XXOO
Happy New Year to you, too, Kate. Phil checks in here and lurks around in the corner so he'll know already.
xox
Dive, you should stay sober less. At least that's the lesson I got from your story.
My plan for today is to go on a hike, then take a nap, then hang around reading or writing or something similarly mundane.
Vanda: Your day sounds exceedingly tempting. If only I had the weather to join you. Hey ho.
Happy New Year!
Once upon a time a boy from blighty spent a new year's eve in the colonies, south australia to be precise. He modestly drank his scotch in the company of good friends who more modestly watched the fireworks on TV. There was possibly one, very funny drunk in sight but otherwise it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening.
The new year's day dawned bright and sunny and the boy from blighty wandered about the gardens enjoying the summer scents and promptly forgot all about the past fifty old year's eves.
That sounds Heavenly, Mme.
Unfortunately this boy from Blighty woke up to find 2010 knee deep in snow again. Hey ho.
Happy New Year to you in the sunny South!
As a child I was forced to spend every New Year's Eve in a local club celebrating my grandmother's birthday with my enormous extended family. One year (circa 1973) a cabaret act was hired and did a full on Batley Variety Club/Wheeltappers And Shunters set and were joined by a "glamorous" vocalist - a woman of about fifty wearing a mini dress and blue eyeshadow. Put it this way, I wouldn't want to spare a thought for them after having put us through all that.
Er ... is it 2010 yet?
Hee hee, Betty.
Happy New Year, whatever year it is.
Dive - Here's my brother's response to your post. He worked drawing caricatures at some posh party in Washington DC.
"Happy New Year. I read your buddy's post about playing on NY's Eve. That was great. Hauling gear around is the worst part of both drumming and caricaturing. At least with caricaturing there's not as much. Still, last night at about 1:55 (I worked an extra hour) I realized the garage I parked in was about to close. I had to tell the people I was drawing that I was done for the night, leave all my stuff sitting there, run out of the building-not easy to do, for me anyway. I was totally lost in a huge hotel packed with drunk singles-run down the block, get my car, double park in the hotel drive-up, talk my way back into the building, try to find my stuff-not easy for me-pack everything up and get out of there before my car was towed. The good news was that I made lots of money! the bad news was my check was $120 short. The good news is they promise to mail me the rest. At least I didn't have to wear a bow tie!"
Hee hee hee, Lulu, that is too darned funny!
I winced in sympathy with him as I read it. At least when the whole band is in a bus you don't have to worry about leaving your gear while you fetch your car, but I remember a lot of occasions like that when I was younger. Nerve-wracking and frustrating.
At least he got paid well for the night's work. Cool!
Gee, you're reminding me why the life of a cappella singers is so much easier.
Get dressed; go to the venue; find a side room in which to warm up (reminding the hosts that no, we don't need a room with a piano); go on stage; sing; go home.
All that equipment -- wow.
Of course, we don't get hired for New Year's Eve, anyway. More like Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, birthday parties. We're not loud enough for New Year's Eve.
Hi, Sarah!
For years I had three girl backing singers and the amount of gear they needed was scary! Not just the radio mikes and stuff but they all had three costume changes a night and enough make-up and hairspray to sink a battleship. Sheesh! The dressing room used to look (and smell) like a bomb had hit a brothel.
Dang. We're obviously doing this whole thing wrong.
No hairspray, no mikes, one outfit per event.
We do carry the occasional drum or prop. Like a pound of Peet's coffee and one of Starbucks.... that was for the introduction to "Java Jive" for a Peet's-friendly Berkeley audience. The Starbucks coffee was tossed over the speaker's shoulder and (usually) caught by a singer behind her. Only once was it caught in the face.
And of course, the main piece of equipment is the tuning fork our genius leader uses to give us the pitches. (Pitch pipes are for low-lifes, apparently. She can do it all with an A.)
Sarah: You have GOT to get Katie to video a performance. I'd love to see and hear you in action.
We'll see what we can do in the way of a video someday. It may not be exactly your kind of music, but we do have fun.
One of our singers bought time in a recording studio at a fund-raising service auction. So if we ever get around to recording there, and the results are any good, then we'll send you a track.
(After all, you were kind enough to share your rehearsal for that wedding reception....which you complained was lousy, but I'm sure it wasn't, but you could hardly find someone less qualified to judge it than my own rock-deprived self.)
Sarah: I like all kinds of music (though Katie would complain that I like clinky-clanky modern classical a little too much), so I would love to hear you.
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