Poorly Played....Poorly Played

Well now that the election is over and I have started to get over the horror of what happened I can get back to jotting down notes about crap that doesn’t really matter much.

I purposely avoided writing over the past few weeks because I am beyond passionate when it comes to things of a political nature. I struggle with the thought of cranking out political commentary twice a day or just sticking to the inane.

This blog is written in a Google environment though and I am someone…and you can call me paranoid…that is afraid to criticize our current regime…I mean, administration…too harshly.

Before getting to the BS I will just mention that our supreme leader who was to bring us all together and galvanize the world is now facing the fact that there is a growing outcry around this country from people in states who are gathering petitions to secede from the union. The number is over 20 that I can tell right now. That is a failure in leadership.
Oh yeah, and our glorious leader’s middle east policy is so fantastic that there is a full-blown crisis breaking out across the region like none I have seen in my lifetime.

On our podcast, The Dungeon of Manlove, we play a “game” called “Be Careful What You Wish For.” It generally is about musicians who upload their crappy music to the internet with hopes of being discovered and adored by the world (much like the goal of our podcast, I should add.) Over 60 million people wished for this re-election in a similar type of contest which has, unfortunately, much greater consequences.

I cut out “friends” over this election (but made some new ones) because I had a strict rule about discussing politics in the Facebook forum. Those who were actively against my side who broke that rule had two consequences; 1- were subject to my retort and; 2- subject to being added to my useful idiot list and removed from my “friend” list. Twenty such people, including my personal lawyer, are now looking to replace me.

Ok, so I apparently needed to get that off of my chest. Consider it done.

I have a time-honored tradition in my life that once Thanksgiving hits, I stop paying hourly attention to news of the world. I allow myself to absorb holiday spirit and become immersed in it. For 11 months I stress over the daily decisions by politicians and policy wonks and those who wish to destroy my way of living. On T-Day Eve, its over. Its all about Santa, Frosty, Rudolph, Jingle Bells and gaining 10-15 pounds eating Christmas treats.
In the past I used to take the last two weeks of the year off from work to vacation and just sit in places where people rush around like mad freaks and watch them rush around like mad freaks and simply relax. I’m not really able to do that now because I like to try to keep myself open to perform at holiday parties, but even in that situation I am working at a party so it’s a lot less like work.

I am very much looking forward to Wednesday night then so I can begin that process and just work more on creating dirty song parodies for the Dungeon show.

I have found new motivation in life writing, performing and recording filthy song parodies. In just a couple of months we have recorded two dozen of them and have been playing them on the podcast. Music, and apparently any type of music, attracts listeners. Our subscriber base expanded four fold in the last two months jumping from about 1200 to over 5000. It’s a phenomenon!

I was doing one of my mentalism shows the other night in North Carolina. I love doing them because most of what I do has not been seen by many who watch them as opposed to the hypnosis shows where many more are familiar with potential contents.
For this particular show I sent a prediction to my hosts a week in advance. On show night I was going to do a demonstration and the results of which were going to be revealed from inside the sealed prediction envelope.
The demonstration involved gathering random numbers from about 20 people in the audience. I wrote down the numbers on little pieces of paper and then had someone begin to add them.

While they were being added I did another routine which was another awesome one in a series of awesomeness that had been unfolding all night. During the middle of it I was checking the addition of my audience helper and the numbers weren’t adding up right.

After the current skit was completed I had to add the numbers myself and indeed they weren’t adding up to the number that I had predicted. I asked everyone to check the floor around them to see if I had dropped a piece of paper because my number was 28 short of what it was supposed to be.

When it was determined that the floor was clear I realized that my finale was blown and the secretary of the vice president of the company was holding the envelope which everyone knew had this prediction that was going to be revealed.

Well, basically that was the end of the show. Fortunately the rest of the evening went flawlessly, but what everyone will remember, unfortunately, was that I bombed my finale.
So people were starting to head home for the evening when I turned around to my table where I had all of my show supplies and sitting right there was the missing piece of paper with the number 28 on it. Unfortunately it was too late to salvage the finale other than to a couple key people who were at least able to see that my prediction was true.
Apparently when I picked up a calculator to give to my helper in the audience I dropped the piece of paper.

A few key people did see what happened and remained impressed nonetheless but I literally dropped the ball on the ending of what had otherwise been a great show night.

I now believe that The Voice is the best singing contest show on TV clearly now surpassing American Idol and the X Factor (which has never been as good as The Voice anyway.)
The talent on this show is well beyond these other shows. I know that many of the singers on there have been those who are currently working or have had deals in the past and it sometimes lacks the appeal of Idol where it seems like a regular person can be discovered, but its still great.

The winner of The Voice should be 18-year old Trevin Hunte, a big, burly, unassuming guy with a range that makes him able to do songs that women sing as well as men. He has a true gift that we will get to hear for decades to come, hopefully.



Trevin Hunte



But even with him leading the way there are other clear stars that will shine. Terry McDermott, a classic true rocker; Amanda Brown a sultry rocker; Nicholas David an early 70’s throwback with a Barry White type of voice; Cassadee Pope who can best be described as an Avril Levigne; and Sylvia Yacoub who nearly blew her chance trying to sing Celine Dion the other night, but at least came close enough to pulling it off to keep her in the competition.



Sylvia Yacoub



Cassadee Pope

I imagine that a couple of guys who have snuck their way into the top ten because of their looks will may outlast a couple that I have mentioned, which will be a shame, but those that I have mentioned I believe will have long careers in the music industry.

I think you can tell that I am rooting for the two girls above in the photos. Because someone has to offset the teeny bopper girls who vote for hot dudes who can't sing.

I would watch the X Factor but I rarely watch any shows that I watch at their regular broadcast time. I watch them late at night when I am done with anything else that I am doing On Demand (my cable company’s service.) X Factor is On Demand but only for a short period of time. So if I don’t watch it right away, I miss it. So if I miss a couple I have a tendency to lose interest.

Poorly played, X Factor, poorly played…just like my finale…just like the election.

Done