Killer Sheep, Bad Craziness and Mercury's In Retrograde

Tired and depressed this morning – A gray November day might be part of it, not cold but there was a damp chill in the air and the sky was a dull soulless gray and the trees, with their leaves falling more rapidly looked stark and bare and twisted against the sky. Maybe that’s why I feel like this. Maybe it was I didn’t get much sleep, maybe, as a friend said, Mercury’s in retrograde ( Per Astrology this means things don’t work out – communications get bogged mixed up) and that’s the reason (Mercury’s retrograde movement ends Friday so we’ll see if that’s the case)…nothing seems to be working right.

Maybe - there’s got to be some reason yes? Or not.

Last night at O’Hanlon’s was grim – how grim? There was nobody there – two people counting the bartender when I got there. Later the Enemy Below and the Insect Girl arrived.

“Well this sucks” the Enemy Below said.

I nodded. We still had not had the world premiere of the killer sheep song – which is forming the basis of the Killer Sheep/Giant Robot/Alien Attack musical (I’d be willing to bet money there aren’t going to be a lot of Google hits for that word string. “Killer Sheep/Giant Robot/Alien Attack Musical”

At this point the bartender (not the regular at O’Hanlon’s) mentioned that there was another open mike going on in Astoria. We all looked at each other and thought so that’s where the other people are.

We waited a little longer and then decided that we’d can this open mike – and hit the other one – we wanted to do the new song damnit - ah if we had only known. One brave soul did come but she, showing great wisdom as it turned out, decided not to join us at the other open mike.

The Other Open mike (or OOM) was in an Irish pub looking place – it has dark wood partitions and sort of the faux old country look that Irish pubs are supposed to have. It had a small area off for performers and the guy was setting up the speakers and the like when we came in. The crowd seemed a pretty typical Irish pub crowd; some of them were actually Irish judging by the accents.

Meantime what we didn’t know was it was this guy’s birthday that night. And his friends decided to celebrate by getting him blind insane drunk. To the point he couldn’t really talk or walk very well, and he had lost all impulse control.

As had his friends. We bought beers signed up and then were appalled by the actions of Birthday Boy (hereafter BB) who kept wandering about – and singing into the other microphones as the guy running the open mike was setting up. He wasn’t signing so much as making weird growling type mouth noises with the occasional f##k you and C**t – which somehow he managed to pronounce perfectly – still can you mispronounce F##k? even with as much booze as he had been pouring down his neck? It also didn’t help that he was almost stereotypical chinless jugged ugly in a British Isles kind of way.

So as we waited, I was getting more uncomfortable – my nerve endings were singing danger danger Will Robinson. One of the Birthday group laid his head on the bar and fell asleep – a man and woman were far gone in a mutual group grope (neither party was that attractive so there wasn’t even token voyeur interest. And BB would wander up to the mike and try to sing along with Roy Orbersion song on the juke box – it came out kinda ‘grawwekla raaaawww yoooo be graallllwlinkkkk fucker’s ovvvvvvvvvvvverrrrrrrrrrrrrrr geaokkkkkkk” and so on.

And then the corner joined in and applauded BB’s little scene. Bad craziness all about. Then – after the guy running the OOM had sung a few songs – while BB came up and growled into the mike on one (I really kept expecting him to fall down every time he stood up or pass our like his friend at the bar – but I’ll give him marks for stamina – he managed to keep from passing out, falling or throwing up while we were there – which was about an hour and ½ but seemed sooo much longer. ) it was our turn to go. We played No promotion, our new song – to no real reaction and then someone else – that the BB liked. It wasn’t our finest performance by a long shot – but it was good to finally sing the killer sheep song in public.

Our trauma did not end there – he was relatively restrained when we were playing – except for the one time he stood right in front of me and I blurted out “I can not work under these conditions.’ and I made a crack about a drunk in Someone else which everybody missed.

It was when the insect girl was going to play that it almost got very ugly – BB was sprawled on the stage near Insect Girl’s feet – she was ‘get him outta here.” And I added “get him off the stage.” To the poor sap running this thing. The BB took offense and for a second it looked like he was going to try and pick a fight with me (what the hell is it about drinking that brings out the belligerence in people? It was ugly to look in the eye) which would have been the first fight I’d had since I was a kid – but I figured a) he was drunk enough that there wasn’t much to worry about and b) I remembered enough of my martial arts training to understand I didn’t need to afraid of him (maybe all of his friends) and there wasn’t any thing her worth fighting for. Still had he made a move towards the insect girl between the enemy below and myself – he’d still be looking for his teeth.

Anyway the insect girl sang (very well I have to say) and with the ADD that drinking too much brings (look shiny things!) BB forgot about getting into a fight – which I figured would happen. I sure he wasn’t a bad guy in his jug eared chinless way but he was just too drunk to be in public. And honestly one of his buds should have taken him home.

Once we finished we piled out of there with the plea of the poor schmuck running the open mike saying “it’s not like this all the time.’

Well maybe not but we’re not going back anyway.
Mercury’s in retrograde – has to be the reason.

Anyway not learning we are going to Martz-Astoria Wednesday for their open mike and serenade the easily shockable crowd there with Stacy and the killer sheep song.

I love being able to write words ‘killer sheep song’ if nothing else we’ve manged to something – lots of bands have love songs how many have a song about brain eating and one about killer sheep? Not a lot I’d bet. Not a lot.