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Monday, November 26, 2007

brother-in-law karaoke

today the masses of family-in-law converged upon our house, filling up the living room and dining room for possibly the first time ever. (here i should note that the terms "living room" and "dining room" are location-specific, meaning that, in new york city, the only way to divide a postage-stamp-sized living room from a postage-stamp-stub-sized dining room is by putting a bookcase that takes up half of both rooms but does, nonetheless, create the illusion that you have a normally-segmented (though microscopic) house.
annnyway....

itta spent the afternoon babysitting niece and nephew, and i spent it finishing the passably beta version of the candy in action website. then tonight, my in-from-melbourne brother-in-law dov and i went off in search of a bar.

i'd passed this lounge/bar/internet cafe a bunch, so we went there first. turns out the "bar" part was...well, false advertising. "we might apply for beer," said the hostess. "what do you think?"

we walked around. we found a place that, according to a hipster on the corner, "might be sketch or might be not." we took our chances. dov's tall. i have payos. who in brooklyn would be threatened by us?

so we went into the bar. dov asked them to put on the eagles game. three people worked the TV until green uniforms appeared. and, as the bartender returned with our drinks, she bore a deathly serious countenance as she told us:

"it's karaoke night. and you are both going to sing."

we did. eventually. dov kept flipping through the book, asking should we do this? we can't do this. and telling me that his voice wasn't good. then i signed myself up, and i told the host that he was going to sing "land down under" right after me.

i went up. we were the only white people in the bar, did i tell you that? and the only people who had gone before sang mary j. blige. i was freaked out. usually, when i do karaoke, i do cheesy white-people songs. the dixie chicks and madonna are my friends. alanis. god, alanis. but tonight i did stevie wonder. signed, sealed, delivered. and everyone started clapping along with me. after i was done, dov sang, and he even hit the whistling chorus. and then a middle-aged man sang a note-perfect rendition of luther vandross.

and we all felt like we'd earned our keep in this world.

Monday, November 12, 2007

candy, cooking, and what not to do at parties

before i forget, let me tell you that Candy in Action is signed, sealed, on its way to the printers, and you can pre-order it from me or from amazon through that link there. if you order through on amazon by clicking through my page, i get a very tiny percentage, so yes, it's cool if you do that. if you order through me, of course, mention if you'd like to have me write anything special.

a mere few hours before shabbos, and we are both in the kitchen cooking up a mad storm. as if there were any other kind of storm, especially in cooking. we have carrots so big, i almost stabbed itta's stomach with one. no hard feat, of course, since it's getting bigger than christmas, and hard to avoid, especially when carrying armfuls of spices with names like Pottery Barn colors.

last night at the Jewcy party, i spent a good deal of the night getting drunk with marty from ROI 120, and having him introduce me to people in the most abrupt of ways:

MARTY: "Hey, this is Izzy. She's the one who pays you and tells you when your stuff is shit."
ME: Oh. (pause) Was it?
IZZY: (longer pause) Erm, what was your name again?
ME: Matthue. Matthue Roth.
IZZY: Oh, no. Mostly not, anyway.
Me: (sigh of mostly relief)

toward the end of the night, i pitched them what i remember as being a sequel to my memoir in maybe a hundred and fifty columns. i remember being really excited about it, but i wasn't the person whose reactions i should have been watching.

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