Tag Archives: postaday2011

12 Tips for Not Completely Sucking at an Open Mic

7 Jan

I’ve been spending a lot of time at open mics lately.

Let me rephrase that.

I don’t really ever go out, but when I do, it’s usually to an open mic.  Mostly because I have a musician for a boyfriend and an apartment that chucks a hippie in your face upon entry and my life has just sort of developed into this strange, artsy, music-y strangeness.  Yes, I said strange strangeness.  It’s technically legal to say that.  Just one more sign that English is failing us.

So because I tend to harbor unnecessarily strong opinions about things that I have little or no expertise in, I’ve decided to stay true to my nature and compile a list of tips for Open Mics.  That is, if you want to play at them.  If you want tips for being in the audience – I only have one: drink.

So here I give thee,

How to Not Completely Suck Playing an Open Mic

1)   Don’t have an expression on your face that is more intense than your song.  It’s a one-way ticket to douchebaggery.

2)   Tune.  And not into the mic, doofus.

3)  Try to avoid “jamming.”  There are few people in this world who can bring anyone joy with jamming: people who are already rock stars, and grandmothers.

4)  Pay attention to the sets that are played before you’re up.  Don’t follow a cover of  “Closer” (originally by Nine Inch Nails), for example, with an original song entitled “Lollipops, Babies, and Kitten Kisses.”  Which brings me to…

5) Consider your venue.  Consider your genre.  If they don’t match up, stay in the audience.  It will save you 10 minutes of performer’s hell. 

6)  Know when it’s your turn and have your big sack o’ stuff ready to go.  There is absolutely no excuse for lugging your guitar case up front in a crowded bar, unlatching it all the way around, taking out your guitar, and (ugh) tuning  [refer to tip 2]. 

7) Get to know the other folks playing up there.  Like their stuff or not, they’ll be your biggest supporters.  Even if you suck really, really hard.

8 ) Do not, I repeat, do not get drunk before you get in front of the microphone.  If this proves difficult for you, show up earlier and get higher on the list.

9) Write new songs.  People who go to open mics enjoy hearing fresh music from up-and-coming hopefuls.  Chances are you’ll get a group who comes every week, and after the 4th week in a row of hearing your working rendition of “Lollipops, Babies, and Kitten Kisses,” they’re going to get tired of your face.

10) Tell the audience if it’s an original.  Sometimes….rarely… but sometimes, someone actually writes an original song that’s really good and the audience will chalk it up as a cover unless you tell them otherwise.  If you’re lucky enough to be able to write something people want to listen to, make sure you take credit for it.

11)   There’s a difference between good musicians and good performers.  People want to watch someone who is both.  So make that happen.

12)   If you like something you see someone else do, figure out what it is and make it your own.  Sometimes, that’s what seeing the up-and-comers is all about.

So there you have it: my list of how-to’s, written from the perspective of someone who’s never done it.  But hey, I watch it a lot.  And I have a public medium with which to express my uneducated opinion.  And I’d like to think that counts for something. ♣

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Elevator Tetris

6 Jan

Had I not gotten a degree in theater, I’d have aggressively pursued sociology.  …Well, the fun parts of it anyway. 

I’m a people-watcher.   I love to study them, the way they move, their quirky, inexplicable habits.  Trying to capture these details with my own body is my way of immersing myself in the study of people and of society and is one of my favorite parts of being an actor.  And it is for these reasons that I just adore watching office folk.

I have an office job by day because I need something to help feed my theater habit at night.  It’s a cruel, addictive cycle.  In my time amongst cubicles, elevators, and important titles, I am continually amused by the society that has been created there.  I am an outsider – a Jane Goodall, throwing herself into a world to live amongst these creatures and to study their interactions.

One of my favorite parts of the office is Elevator Space Relations.  This is true in any elevator scenario with more than one person, but I find it particularly interesting at the office. 

I was heading down from the top floor today and joined the 5pm elevator party just after a particularly high-level executive. 

Before we got on, however, he did me the good service of pretending to be interested in how I was today and I did the same for him.  I told him I was good and he told me he was good.  This is another fun one for me…because let’s face it: when anyone asks that question who isn’t your best friend or family member, they don’t really want an honest answer.  I totally felt like junk today.  I came in to the office to see how long I could make it because I’m a moron.  When he asked how I was, an honest answer would have been something like, “Oh, I’ve been better.   My head was a giant, disgusting hot air balloon filled with evil pixies smacking their wands on my frontal lobe and making it through this day was no small feat but I was too afraid to call off and look like a flake.”

Something told me that would have made the last 10 floors even more awkward. 

And so we stood in silence…the entire time from the top of the building to the bottom.   There’s only so long one can stare at the blinking number at the top of an elevator before they feel like an idiot.

It’s like we all got together one day and decided that there wasn’t enough time between point A and point B on an elevator and that since no one knows how many people may join on the way up or down, there is little possibility for discussion outside of the weather and the number of days ’til Friday.  So we just stopped talking altogether. 

My next favorite thing is how beautifully people will align themselves in an elevator.  It’s like one big spatial relations puzzle.  Every time someone new enters the picture, people in the elevator, without talking or making eye contact, will naturally work together to adjust themselves so that they leave as much room for a personal bubble as possible for everyone involved.

 It’s like the bathroom stall game, where if there are three and the nearest one has someone in it, you go to the far one.  Who made up these rules? 

I’ll admit, I like to rebel.  Sometimes when someone asks me how I am, I actually tell them.  And sometimes, I actually follow-up when they lie and tell me they’re good just to see if I can shake a human answer out of them.    Furthermore, I sometimes make people uncomfortable by choosing the stall directly beside them. 

I get myself through my day job with these little games.  I’ll admit that just a few days ago there were 3 people joining me on an elevator ride and I didn’t move from my space.  Yes, I felt the air thick with anticipation.  I felt their discomfort with the fact that there was not even spacing between the 3rd and 4th temporary members of the steel ride society but I was comfortable and deemed that everyone had an adequate amount of room.  And then an amazing thing happened: everyone else adjusted to me. 

I felt powerful.  I felt like an elevator goddess, directing human traffic with my mind.  I was the awkward T shaped tetris piece and everyone had to start a new row to adjust for my addition to the stack.  It was glorious.

I think I’ll start to use these powers for my rise in human society.  I will be the immovable force around which others must accordingly adjust themselves.   And slowly but surely, I will make my way to the top of the corporate world.  One awkward elevator ride at a time.♣

 

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Confession of an UberGeekNerd

5 Jan

Sometimes I feel like I understand the miniscule, shaky line that society has drawn between geeks and nerds and then I read something like this Wikihow and I’m utterly confused again.  So to solve this issue forevermore, I will simply refer to myself as a GeekNerd.  

Me, a GeekNerd? Alas, it is true.  In fact, I feel that with so many recent subscriptions to Twist365, some of ya’ll deserve a better grasp of what you’re in for.  So here I give thee: Confession of an UberGeekNerd.

I suppose the dead giveaway is that my dad is a Dungeon Master.  And no, I’m not referring to a dirty kink… I’m referring to the wonderful world of Dungeons and Dragons.

If you’re still reading this, thanks.  This is where I usually lose people.  In fact, I’m pretty convinced that aside from my aggressive personality and bizarre cartoon voice outbursts, my role-playing habit is probably the next best reason I didn’t have much of a dating life in, well…ever.

See, my father being a Dungeon Master meant that my entire life revolved around D&D.  When I turned 13, he proudly handed me a 20-sider and allowed me my rite of passage: rolling up a new character.  It meant I was truly part of the family.  After all, my mother and two older brothers played every Tuesday night without me because I wasn’t allowed to join the table until I was of age. And I’ll admit that when the time came for me to jump in, I totally digged it.  There’s something about sitting around a huge table of men approaching a midlife crisis with their huge velvet bags of bulk-ordered multi-colored dice and pieces of paper in front of them that served as proof that they were not really themselves but actually wizards, fighters, and powerful mages in a highly developed fantasy world that seriously altered my adolescent experience.  

Our entire house oozed with peculiarities.   My father’s bedroom was a library bursting with fantasy novels from which  he gleaned material to create his very own world for his friends and family to play in.  In fact, he eventually wrote his own reference book, which was as thick as a dictionary and chock-full of pictures, reference materials, spell charts, and some of his original art.    Oh: did I mention my dad’s an artist?  A really good one, too.  In fact, he just received his Masters to compliment his dual undergrad and is making some truly groovy stuff.  I’m hoping to commission him to jazz up my site soon.  But before all that happened, dad’s biggest outlet for his artistic desires was in the form of character wanted posters.

Essentially, my father would develop a core group of characters in his D&D world and introduce recurring enemies for them to fight.  (For those of you who actually know what I’m talking about, he ran a campaign with old school modified 2nd edition, not this crazy 4th edition 20-sider based business you’re all up to now).  So once characters had committed crimes in his world and the recurring enemies started to take notice of them, he proceeded to draw up wanted signs and plaster them all over our dining room walls, complete with portraits, who was hunting them and the amount of the reward in gold pieces.    Many a Baker family dinner was spent munching on spaghetti and talking about our days with imaginary Dungeons and Dragons characters staring down at us from every side.   For a while, the only thing that even made that room resemble a dining area was the fact that it had a surface to eat on.  But then Dad decided to redesign the table.

When it became absolutely crucial to our gaming experience, dad decided to transform our dining room table into a Dungeons and Dragons table.  He coated it in black acrylic paint and cut a huge square hole in the middle which he replaced with gridded plexiglass and two freshly mounted black lights.  Reason would dictate that this was unnecessary and perhaps not the most sound decision based on the fact that D&D was only scheduled for Tuesdays and living our lives was scheduled for all other days.  But it was also admittedly totally awesome.

It’s unfortunate that I eventually had to grow up and go to college because it meant that I could no longer be part of my dad’s D&D world.  It also meant that I had to find a way to fill the void, which was immediately accomplished with World of Warcraft.

My gaming addiction is a beast in itself.  The best indication I can give you of the severity of my problem is that one of my best friends in college gathered up his desktop computer, brought it over to my suite, pounded down the door, and demanded that if I wasn’t going to come outside, he was going to set up an equally addictive game beside me so that he could at least still spend time with me.

He was a damn dedicated friend.

If that isn’t enough for you to fully grasp the picture, perhaps it will help if I also add that my current boyfriend and love of my life recalled just the other day how when he first met me,  I was always in my room, unshowered and in my pajamas, huddled over the computer with boxes of pizza hidden beneath my mattress.

Hey – something had to fill the void.

Supposedly, I’m cured now.  I eventually got the courage to uninstall Warcraft (after a terrible relapse or two) and it is now safely tucked away in my basement storage locker.  It still calls to me sometimes in the still of the night.

So for now, I have nothing.  I have no D&D, I have no WoW, and thus I have no outlet for my GeekNerd addictions.  I suspect that I can only go on like this for so long before some underworldly demon rips me from reality and tosses me into my own personal hell.  After all, I work right down the street from GameStop and I can’t  help but notice all the expansion packs.   Not to mention Blizzard’s Diablo III is currently under development and the release of that game is a burden that may be too incredible for me to bear.

So I’m stoked that I finally have a laptop.  Because any day I may relapse, quit my job, and disappear from society, which will inevitably leave me homeless and wandering from coffee shop to coffee shop in search of an outlet and a table with which to feed my beastly addiction.  And if that day comes within the span of my 365 Project and I happen to blog about it, maybe you can all come visit me with your computers and play your favorite addicting games so that I feel like I’m part of the human network again.  ♣

Hey! I’m not alone in my resolution to blog every day.  In fact, WordPress is encouraging everyone to resolve to update their blogs once a week or once a day in 2011.  Check out these cool cats who are giving it a shot:
http://shelbyisrad.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/guess-what-im-doing/
 
http://herheartsmiles.com/2011/01/04/im-posting-every-week-in-2011/
 

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Fear Mongering

3 Jan

Listen, let’s set up some ground rules.  You know, like kickball.

You’re excited, yes.  I understand.  There are few things more thrilling in life than hulking over someone else’s, mouthbreathing loudly.  Personally, I think it’s the bee’s knees – but you’re going to have to control yourselves.   Texting me at 2pm asking me where my blog update is when I don’t even get off work for 3 more hours is borderline terrorism.   Well, if we’re in the Bush era, anyway.  In the Bush era, Tide commercials were terrorism.

I’m sensing that my 365 project is setting a precedent for fear mongering, not only from you to me, but from me to you.  That’s right: I propose that I am scaring you.

I say this because blogging used to mean that I waited around until something interesting or maddening enough happened so that I had material.  But now… now I’m making things happen so that I have something to blog about.   Friends are wondering if I’ll use them as subjects, my cats don’t lick themselves in front of me anymore, and my coworkers are huddled under their cubicles with the phone already dialed to Corporate waiting for me to blog about work.  One even timidly asked if he was “allowed” to read it.   

Let’s be clear about something: I can be an asshole, but I’m an asshole who needs to pay bills.  Catch my drift?   Besides, when brainstorming today about what I might feature for my first of the Lollipop Tuesdays series (see below), a friend suggested I set up a hot dog cart on the Executive Floor.  How could I possibly stoop to blogging about office politics when I could blog about slingin’ weiners to top execs? Furthermore, my own boyfriend was scared out of his wits before he left that I would make my entire post about his newfound desire to attain a man purse.   Which, I’ll admit, is very appetizing.  Really.  Even just typing the words now has gotten my carpal tunnel all hot and bothered. 

So listen: everything is going to be okay.  Say it with me: “Everything is going to be okay.”

Yes, I have to blog about my life because though I’m inspired to try this project, I’m not inspired to focus it on food or movies or baby animals wearing turtlenecks and eating pasta.  But I’m not out to get anyone and chances are that of all the absolutely moronic people I talk to each day, you’ve got some tough competition to make top rank.  That’s a heartfelt compliment.

All right – so we’re clear now.  I won’t attack you intentionally, and you won’t text, email, call and harrass me if I don’t post before 6pm.  And for the record, my deadline is actually 23:59:59. ♣

Today: We had a little blog therapy together.  Don’t you feel better now? I know I do.

Tomorrow: Lollipop Tuesday.  There’s only one way to find out what that means.  Stop by- it could be kinky.

*Keep an eye out for updates and reveals as Twist365  trudges onward.  With an artist for a father and a software engineer for a brother, I have to be able to pull off something cool eventually, right?*

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My 365 Project Begins

2 Jan

Hello again Interwebz.  Allow me to reintroduce myself.

For the longest time I had this blog -> http://jacklynriffic.blogspot.com/.  I started in 11th grade and I continued into college, only somewhat committing myself to its existence.  As time went on, however, I began to treat it like a red-headed stepchild and with what became terribly infrequent updates, I decided to stop bothering altogether .  

But this whole 365 Project thing is becoming quite the trend (see below if you’re clueless) and I have a friend who embarked on one, taking one picture every day for 365 days.  I found it inspiring and decided to do my own.  Since I have absolutely no skills except the mockery of everyday events, I’ve decided to fire up my blog again.  Because the only thing that makes monotonous, social events bearable for me is the prospect of talking to myself about it later on that day. 

So here we are.  WordPress instead of Blogger, 2011 instead of 2008, and a laptop instead of a desktop.  Bam.  See below for Project 365 homework and Subscribe to my blog to release your fullest stalking abilities.   Get excited for 2011, folks.

Catch up with me! —> http://jacklynriffic.blogspot.com/ 

Other Project 365ers

  • LM Photography – The Pittsburgh-based photography company belonging to my friend and source of inspiration for Twist365.  Fine Art.  Portraits, Headshots. Events.  For more information, contact her at laurenkatemorrison@gmail.com
  • Julie/Julia Project – perhaps the most well-known, this blog by Julie Powell featured her daily attempts to cook every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child.  It was later turned into a book and a movie. 
  • 365 Letters – Carla has written a letter every day since 2009.
  • Live and Let Livia – Livia Scott recorded herself performing a different character each day for a year.
  • Stormtroopers365 – Stefan documented the daily adventures of two toy Stormtroopers every day.

For more information on 365 blogs, you can also check out “365: A Daily Creativity Journal” by Noah Scalin.  Who knows; you might grow a pair and start your own.

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