Listening to: Colin Hay, "Overkill." I don't watch Scrubs so I'm about seven years late on this song. Better late than never they say.
Over drinks in an empty bar on Russian Hill, one that played most of Paula Abdul's hits in succession (there's quite a lot of them actually), a friend told us that Comcast cable has free karaoke under their music channels section. He said that it had quite a few recent songs and would suck us in immediately. Well, after trying it out tonight, he was totally right. As we sat around on Leslie's couch going through Jodeci, Lady Gaga, The Fray, Etta James, Michael Jackson, and a Celine Dion, I wondered why nobody had created an online karaoke site yet. Lo and behold, the free Comcast karaoke was produced by such a site. The Karaoke Channel is exactly what I was thinking of. Thousands of songs and an easy interface that allows you to sing to your heart's content.
One of my genius ideas years ago was "caraoke". I'm sure I've talked about it before. I thought having a built-in karaoke machine attached to your car's GPS touch screen would make road trips instantly amazing. Of course, technology has done us one better because of iPhones and such. Now I just look up the lyrics on the fly and caraoke along. For some reason though, I never thought to actually explore the web for karaoke sites. Now I have and I can safely say that my weekends in might be changed forever. I'm a little disappointed in The Karaoke Channel's selection -- no Ne-Yo, no Mraz, no Shai? -- but in a pinch, it'll do just fine.
Other things I learned tonight: All those songs by British singers that sound great? It's impossible to replicate their sound unless you can sing with an English accent. And seeing as most people can't pull that off successfully, singing Adele, Lily Allen, or Amy Winehouse is sort of an exercise in futility. But we sang them anyway because hell, it was free karaoke.
A few weekends ago, it was the SF Zine Fest and as I'm actively reverting to my teenage (girl) years, I decided I need to make a zine. What I discovered in my hour or so of crusing the venue was that I'm not actually a huge fan of zines with drawings in them. I'm basically looking for zines that have mostly written content. And if it's too hard to read I can't get into it either. Sadly, I've somehow trained myself to only like nicely printed words in Verdana or Arial or Times. Basically I'm looking for print versions of blogs. I did pick up a few zines heavy on the graphics and drawings but they weren't my first choices.
Things I did get that I'm excited to read:
- On Subbing (Dave Roach, 2004)
- Indestructible (Cristy C. Road, 2006)
- Greenzine 14 (Cristy C. Road, 2005)
- Support (Cindy Crabb, 2002)
- Transrelating: A Memoir on Queer Relationships (Amari Jo, 2009)
"Cristy Road has always brought us breathtaking artwork (some of my favorite) along with literary stories that remind us of the strength and ability of punk youth. This new issue is more of the same with some reflection of Cristy's various homes between Miami and Philadelphia, racism in her communities, the strength of her friends, coming to terms with assault, gender, sexuality, and identity, and much more. The words are powerful, the stories make you feel like anything can be accomplished, and the artwork adds another strong element. Once a true fanzine devoted to Green Day, this zine has now evolved into literary prose devoted to the strengths of our communities."
