On Karaoke and Kleaning
April 5th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
So after work last night, some fairly spontaneous decisions got made and I went into San Francisco to kick it with one Matthew Rorie and his posse. The dude has got no mercy, for sure, and yes, his crew runs DEEP. The night quickly became a blur of autographed sandwiches, a giant flying stone head that pukes guns, and a karaoke bar employee that, for all intents and purposes, was Sam Elliott.
I’m all for karaoke, but I think that people need to totally give themselves over to the experience, realize that they’re essentially making a fool of themselves in front of a crowd, and have fun with it. It always surprises me when I see people up there, singing, looking completely embarrassed. What, exactly, did you think was going to happen when you handed in your stupid little slip of paper?
We ended up bailing out of that place before most of us got a chance to sing, mostly because it was taking forever. I guess that’s one point in favor of the “rent a small room” style of karaoke, but acting like an ass in front of your friends isn’t anything special.
Last night left me a little tapped out, so I’m relaxing a bit and finally straightening up my bedroom, which has become a mess of cables, sweatshirts, networking hardware, and empty Amazon shipping boxes since I started working again. I got sort of obsessive about keeping stuff clean when I wasn’t working, since I was spending plenty of waking hours in this bedroom. Now, it’s effectively gone back to “the place where I go watch TV for a few hours and then go to sleep.” So it’s easy for stuff to pile up.
I’ve also been watching a lot less TV these past few weeks. The Law & Order reruns are history, and I haven’t really been up to keeping tabs on the two or three shows that I usually record, either. Even still, I think I’m going to upgrade to the DirecTV HDTV package. Now that baseball season’s here, I think I’m going to be spending a lot of time watching random baseball games on the weekends, and I might as well be watching them in ridiculously-high resolution. Unfortunately, this means I’d have to give up my TiVo and replace it with the crappy DirecTV equivalent. I have an SD version of the DTV DVR in my living room now and it’s an underpowered piece of crap with awful remote response times. Hmm… this is starting to sound like a white whine, so maybe I should stop here.
While writing this, news came out that Charlton Heston has died.
April 5th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
This is probably really sad, but I was very excited to hear somebody echo my thoughts on karaoke. My passion for karaoke being for public displays of assism is immense.
Also, a visual tag cloud for this would be great.
April 5th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
God damn you all to hell!
April 5th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Good to know about every detail of your life Jeff. Always good to know.
April 5th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Hehe, Xardos. that was going to be my net name years ago but was already taken even during the internet dark ages (around 97′) so I went with this one.
Sounds like a crazy night all and all. Personally I hate Karaoke though, my wife and her sister are obsessed with it…. and love country music… its not a good scene when they get together.
On a sadder note a lot of old ladies will probably shed a tear over the passing of Charlton Heston, apparently he possessed charisma beyond anything normal mortals can dream of.
Through personally I’m still not all that big on Planet on the Apes.
April 6th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Thanks for coming out! I sure hope no one got any video of me singing Build Me Up Buttercup.
April 6th, 2008 at 4:31 am
and what happened to GiantBomb.Com. Can’t connect…
April 6th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Oh, that silly Matt Rorie and his crazy shenanigans!
April 6th, 2008 at 10:17 am
*salutes* That truly was a great man. RIP Charlton Heston.
April 6th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
all well and good jeff, but where’s points?
April 6th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
That sounds like a good time.
I never will do karaoke simply because I am not a fan of making an ass out of myself - guess it is just one of those things I try and avoid. Kind of like bees.
Also, could you have typed a more eye-roll-inducing comment than that Tuffgong? Jeez.
April 6th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Yeah the DirectTV style boxes suck something awful, but it is totally worth it for the HD quality. Baseball looks totally amazing.
April 6th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I think this post states pretty clearly that this blog is a thing of the past now since Giant Bomb launched. I have spent less and less time here since then (and clearly everyone else too, judging my the amount of comments) and with no new “Points!” in what feels like months + yet another post of Jeff sounding like a high school boy who has to “brag” about how “totally wasted I was on Saturday, dude” or ranting about home technical problems in one way or another I think I´m done here. I know I might come off sounding like a complete ass here but I also know that if its one person one earth that can handle straight up, raw, uncensored comments, its Jeff!
April 6th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Except for the part where mentioning that I hung out with friends in and around a bar doesn’t automatically translate to “OH DUDE I WAS TORE UP,” you’re pretty much right. And with a whole blog/podcast/weekly video essentially devoted to “what I think about games,” doing something like Points! seems like it’d be serious repetition right about now.
Plus a blog post consisting of “Hey, I bought No Country For Old Men and haven’t watched it yet” seemed much less interesting.
April 6th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Dude, I KILLED CHARLTON HESTON! Sweardagod I did!
http://agameofme.blogspot.com/2008/04/i-killed-charlton-heston.html
April 7th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Word..word…Jeff hustles like a boss tycoon
April 8th, 2008 at 1:34 am
Wait….you haven’t watched ‘No Country’ yet? Ass, meet edge of seat.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:00 am
I for one am pretty darn interested in whether or not Jeff ever does manage to watch his copy of No Country.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:30 am
The only reason I hate karaoke is because you get people going up who think they can sing and end up being terrible. I love the people who can sing, and those who are terrible and know it, but I really really really hate people who think they can sing but actually make your ears bleed.
April 10th, 2008 at 4:27 am
That’s good to hear you actually like baseball. Seen a hat or two (Phillies I think). I was wondering what your team is. My favorite teams are the Tigers (1-7 baby), Angels and Dodgers. I’m too cheap to pay for lots of channels, so I end up watching a lot of lame Rockies games. PS Love the bombcasts, even though gatorade tiger tastes like alien eggs.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:14 am
HI Jeff
Sorry to be off-topic i just wanted to let you guys know that on the CAG cast (from cheap ass gamer) episode 114 they mention you guys, first saying you guys copied their format (i guess they didn’t know you guys have been around a LITTLE bit longer then they have) i have to say though it was ironic and not an attack. They also add they enjoy your podcast.
Thanks for your work, it is great to have you back.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
If only Matt wasn’t still at gamespot he would be amazing for the bombcast. That guy, while not featured much anymore, is great.
April 11th, 2008 at 9:11 am
Jeff -
I’ve had the DirecTV HD dvr for a while now, and I used to have the TiVo DirecTV HD-DVR as well (I’ve still got the old one in my bedroom). I was skeptical, too, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the new one is actually a bit better. The only things it doesn’t do (that I miss) are record suggestions and have the easy “arrow down” mode where you can flip between tuners. It will let you add an eSATA hard drive and use that for storage, eliminating the need for cracking the box like the old Tivo units and replacing the drives. It’s even got an on-demand service (via broadband - you still have to download, so it’s not instant, like with typical cable). All in all, I’ve been pretty satisfied with it. The only real issue is that you’ll probably need to reset it once a month when it starts doing wacky things (like recording the NFL network when I set it up to record Hardball on MSNBC - maybe it’s telling me something?)