Welp, I’ve officially retired from doing the Thursday night Karaoke show. I gave KJ German all of his equipment back a week or so ago.

I’ll miss it, but I missed Butterfly and my family more, and I missed not being exhausted on Friday morning.

I have two “What was I thinking!?” entries to report.

I’m covering KJ German’s Wednesday night show for a few weeks while he’s off in Germany. Normally I like his Wednesday night show; it’s at one of those very nicely-appointed, hip, trendy, alcoholic Slurpee™ bars; y’know the ones, with the good food, great drinks, and typically a pleasant atmosphere. But I swear there must’ve been a full moon out last night: every lunatic, ass-hole, and crazy was out en masse and they all came to my show.

It makes me question why on Earth I was so eager to get back into the Karaoke business, especially considering that I have a full-time job besides. After last night, I’m totally sick of Karaoke and I fucking hate people–and if I ever see another microphone again, I’m going to throw up.

I want to be alone for a week.

I upgraded my BlackBerry Storm (1) from OS 4.7.whatever to 5.0.0.230, the latest “leaked” OS from RIM, and re-activated it on my account in place of my Curve.

There are not enough developers in all of Christendom that can turn that phone into anything more than a shiny toy. If the Storm 2 uses the same OS–and by all accounts, it will–then it will be no better.

OS 5.0.0.230 updates the User Experience with such baubles as flick-scrolling (a la the iPhone), the text input is faster and more precise, and predictive input gets kicked up a notch. They say they’ve improved the browser too, but I sure can’t tell.

And sadly, RIM will never, ever, ever make voice-assisted dialing not totally suck, and the OS–being a pre-release and all–is still fraught with annoying and aggravating bugs.

In this case, I did know what I was thinking: I was so caught up in Storm 2 fever that I wanted to preview the OS on my Storm 1. But, unfortunately, it was kind of a let-down.

I await the arrival of the Pre and the Droid on Verizon with heightened interest, because the Storm 2 has been completely eliminated from the running. My next “last-phone-I’ll-ever-own” is going to have a real fucking keyboard. Period.

I’m doing my Thursday night show again at my favorite Thursday night venue…

A few of the later-night folks have figured out that they can make the show run longer by ensuring that the host can’t legally drive home. I hope they continue that trend tonight; I could sure use a drink or two…

Man am I beat. Had a late night last night; I hung out at KJ German’s show after mine, just a tad longer than I wanted to. Did some good singing, and marveled at the deep end that KJ German has seriously gone off when putting together his rig. I swear, the damn thing has more lights, buttons, knobs and dials than the goddamn Space Shuttle.

For Crissakes, it’s just Karaoke.

I had to skip my show last week–Butterfly had just gotten released from the hospital last Thuraday after having her gallbladder removed, and I thought it prudent to stay home with my baby and take care of her.

So far, I’ve had no less then six people come up to my stand and tell me “Gee, [Corsair], we sure did miss you last week! We hope your wife is feeling better!”

That’s neat. It’s good to be missed. And my beautiful Butterfly is doing just fine, thanks sending along your wishes.

I tried to tough it out. I really did.

They’re installing new carpeting in our offices, and the adhesive they’re using had given me the most ginormous headache I’d had in a long time. It’s still full-on string, even though I left the office at 1 and took a couple of Naproxin Sodium in an attempt to banish it.

I was feeling so rotten that I ended up getting to my show about a half hour late. I’m so ready to call it quits on the Thursday show–it’s at a smokers’ bar and I’m sick to death of smelling like an ashtray afterwards.

KJ German does a show in Delray on the last Saturday of the month, so I work his regular Saturday night show in West Palm Beach.

This is the third time I’ve worked this show, and it’s always CRAZY busy!

But a good time is had by all–and I was delighted to see ubiquitous_a–an old Karaoke friend I barely ever get to see anymore–in attendance, who got to sing the first song! Which was a good thing–with over 25 singers, the rotations were an hour and a half long!

DrumDude and I had kind of a falling out a few months back… over something really stupid (as most fallings-out are over). And it stinks, too, because I really miss him. He had a really unique way of looking at the world, even though he did make goofy-ass comments in my Livejournal and admittedly tried to drive me insane by calling me every day, multiple times a day, for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

He used to opine that we were just about as diametrically opposed as we could possibly be. But we made really good friends anyway. I thought he was the most amazing drummer alive, andhe thought I was a talented singer and a good Karaoke host. In fact, few things fascinated him more than my Karaoke shows and my regular singers who attended them–he even had this crazy notion about filming a documentary about Karaoke and the characters who delight in getting drunk and singing to their fellow drunks.

I wish I wasn’t so damn stubborn. If I weren’t, I’d contact him again. But I am.

A few months ago, a friend f mine from my high school drama days passed away. A month or so later, a bartender at the venue where I do my Thursday night show also passed away (I will readily admit that I really only knew her by reputation only). And both events got me to thinking, however clichéd and hackneyed the concept, that life really is fleeting; in the words of Col. Sherman T. Potter, “life is a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t kind of affair.” It occurs to me that I should really try and overcome my stubbornness and contact DrumDude again–friends as good as DrumDude are very difficult to come by.

I don’t really believe that DrumDude called me multiple times a day because he was trying to drive me insane. He was doing it because he’s a good friend.