BOJANGLES

The Date:
Last December, my place of employment, the Portland Mercury, purveyor of entertainment, gambling, and back-alley moonshinery, held an auction for charity (the Portland Relief Nursery, a safehouse for neglected/abused children). One of the auctioned-off items was a date with the lady employees of the Mercury, all seven of us–where the promised activities included dining, dancing, and laughing at all the auction winner’s jokes. The winner paid something like $300, no crap, to go on a date with us–a ridiculous amount, but also not too ridiculous as we are extraordinarily beautiful, intelligent, funny, and/or kind (some of us are also fabulous dancers). The winner was a man named BRETT, who looked exactly like Nick Carter from Backstreet Boys, down to hair gel and alluring watery smile. Not my normal swarthy/rabbinical type, but certainly someone I wouldn’t shake a stick at. (And couldn’t, since he’d already PayPaled the 300 bones.) We met at the Shanghai Tunnel, at 8 pm, where we bought him drinks, laughed at all of his jokes, discussed music (he is currently a mortgage officer but used to run a radio show), and basically got him completely ass drunk, on White Russians, by 9 pm. Then we headed to Lola’s Room where DJ Yes No was playing all the hits from 1988 and a large crowd of post-goths or matured Cure fans were dancing in a studied yet uptightedly casual, weekend style. Brett was, in fact, annhiliated, but still able to dance; I found this impressive. Beyond this, I cannot elaborate; I didn’t get much face time. I did freak him on the dancefloor a couple of times. I left before night’s end, so this one goes out to K. Mikey M. who is dying to know: I cannot confirm or deny whether anyone “consummated the auction.” He lives in Beaverton, so for all I know he’s still at Lola’s, waiting for a cab.
The Dog Show:
My friend Rob Kelley, slave to the Oregonian and soon-to-be-linked-here-blogger, and I met at a predesignated time to attend the American Kennel Club dog show championships at the Portland Oregon Expo Center, to be filmed by Animal Planet and attended by at least 1-2000 best-in-show hopefuls. We did this in an attempt to break out of our daily routine of work, show, dancing, sleep, work, show, dancing sleep, and also because dogs are great. But wait! In reality, DOG SHOWS ARE STULTIFYINGLY BORING, and dogs are only great when they’re genetically impure, like the hybrid chihuahua/pug I saw once that looked like a Vienna sausage walking on four toothpicks. The highlights were: 1. DOGSTACLE COURSE, where a dog, led by its owner, must leap hurdles, navigate through a long pink tube, shimmy through a circular conical obstacle a la car-brake testing commercials, and race across a teeter-totter without having a puppy breakdown, and is evaluated for its athletic ability. 2. The TAILS OF WHOA doggie crew, a quadruple pun: three middle aged women walking shelties around the ring, gang name emblazoned on their sweatshirts in iron-on cursive like they were Savage Skulls or something (but really more like the face-painted baseball rollerskating gang in The Warriors). 3. Pomeranians: why are they groomed like fans? and 4. The man who was simultaneously grooming his fluffy white Maltese with a blowdryer and smoking a cigarette. Rob said, “It feels like we are at Costco.”
THE WIKKID:
Four women from NYC playing like an orchestra/snake pit warming up for the no wave inquisition, and you are GUILTY and they are smacking your shit down, on three guitars and drums. Scale runs all mashed together and onomatopaeic vocals that sound like siren spells over cauldrons–yes, they are the closest I will ever get to seeing my idols, still-amazing DC highschool band Meltdown, and that’s okay.
THE YING YANG TWINS:
Here is one reason why crunk is popular: while dancing during the Ying Yang Twins’ approximately third rendition of their hit “Salt Shaker,” I looked down and I was RUBBING MY OWN ASS. Absent-minded quasi-auto-erotic dancing wrought by bass. They played a rotation of “Naggin,” “Salt Shaker,” and “Get Low” like 9 times over, in between constant shout-outs to Bojangles and general cut-throat grunting/ hog-calling; screw Britney, they should be doing collabs w/Dillinger Escape Plan.
I have serious problem with their lyrics, in the tradition of lots of Miami bass I like/love/hate too, namely the line “I hate it when a woman acts like a man” 1/387th reconciled by the lady answer track on the record but come on, dudes. Trad John Gray-style gender roles are so boring. (It should be noted, however, that this show was far less of a sausage party than any underground hiphop or emo shows I’ve been to lately, barring performances by NW queerpunk elite i.e. King Cobra.)
But the club was bumpin, bumpin: there were about 95 people on stage in a 350 capacity venue, and miraculously, ONLY TWO OF THEM WERE RAPPING. The rest were freaky on the platform, like a jeep or a houseparty, breaking the fourth wall in more ways than you’ll want to imagine in the context of this MTPPS weblog. Then DJ Juggernaut spun Twista/Kanye West/Jamie Foxx, at which point I left cause was feeling like it couldn’t get much better. (Love the bongo counter-rhythm, the sample, the total dorky humor of the lyrics. To connect the dots between something smarty smarty K. Sanneh wrote in the Times today about the popular bad-singer trend, and the Barry Walters Voice review of Kelis (no golden throated vocalist herself): singing badly, outside of traditionally accepted paradigm, and not giving a fu, is really punk rock.
The Ying Yang Twins are good dancers.