9/2/04 7:14 PM: Rule of Aquisition #78: When the going gets tough, the tough change the rules.

SWAN SONG: I am having an interesting karaoke week. First of all, my Friday night show at Mel's will very soon be an artifact of the past tense. It seems revenues have been trending downwards since before I took over. The restaurant is making a business decision, and nuking my night. This is not great, since Friday night karaoke was a truly great thing for the nightlife, mine and the "karaoke scene's."

On the other hand, again following the star of my dear friend Dana (pictured), and gotten to know Tony DeFazio of Star Light Karaoke, who has more gigs than he can handle half the time. He just had a KJ drop out on him for Fridays and wants me to possibly pick up the slack. Which is great, as it will mean no interruption in my money making.

The company that started me out and gave an untested Black guy a chance, Hollywood Karaoke, is headed for some unpleasant straights. Part of this is due to divided attention by the principals, part of this is due to sheer bad luck. I've done some things to try and mitigate this -- I cleaned up the logo, I've done a lot to give the company a more professional air -- but I am limited by the fact that, honestly, I don't own any of it. Bad things will happen to some of the gigs they have, some of which I'm not at liberty to disclose for a variety of reasons, the loss of my gig only being the tip of the iceberg.

I have next to no feeling about most of this. Like Jerry Seinfeld when he was described as "even stevens," things normally even out for me. Bad things are mitigated by my overwhelming karmic credit. So many horrible things have happened to me, both personally and culturally, that I could punch nuns in the throat three times a day and never get clsoe to besmirching my spiritual credit rating. It will be nice to work south of the house instead of north of the house, though. All around, I'm pretty pleased about it, I guess.

SNAKEBITE: The movie Anacondas: Hunt for the Blood Orchid is pretty bad. I'm just saying ...

CELLULAR: I'm gonna switch from Boost Mobile to T-Mobile for prepaid. T-Mobile offers prepaid AIM, which would make me very happy. I'm gonna get that done in a few weeks -- I haven't paid for my West LA College class from last semester, so I wanna do that first.

YOU'RE NOT CONFUSED: I am using the "Talk Show" bullet point blog format here. I've decided to free it from its bindings. Whadda ya gonna do about it?

HATRED, PASSION AND INFIDELITY: I've been doing pretty good with my aggressive anti-everything stance, striking out randomly at the world at large and reaping vast rewards from it. The aforementioned hook up from Dana, a relentless source of profit (Rule of Acquisition #51: Reward anyone who adds to your profits so they will continue to do so) is a good exercise of my "evil businessman" shtick, as the new gig came through very shortly after I lent her my unused 20GB iPod (speaking of, I advised Tony about getting one, my Macevangelism continues unabated, even when it's just for MP3 players). OTOH, I got an email today from a clothing company that wanted to talk "improving the existing site," a Flash-driven albatross. Now, I'm not too keen to work on anybody's site, but I went through the motions and answered the guy honestly. Which was probably brusque as hell, since I don't care.

I helped Mike Datcher move last Saturday (even handed him my bulletproof vest and a C-note) after an unfortunate incident forced him to make a very sudden change of address, but not out of any sense of altruism. When I was going through my challenging transition, Mike was at my side relentlessly. In my time of need, he was there, so I am honor bound to do the same. I understand Rule 51 very well, and incorporate it into my life regularly.

THE WRITE STUFF: I finally finished the lyrics for "Criminal Thunder," which I'll record properly probably this week. I've gotten some poetry work done in the last week, as well, and have a new idea percolating for a political thriller. I'm making incremental progress in all things, which I told a distressed poetess is a good thing.

THE PAIN OF THE GODS: So my girl Dana blames Canada for a faulty CD burner, which slowed down my plans for amusement. My dawg Mikey is breaking up with his live-in girlfriend, and it's not going well. My peoples Ana and Daniel are stuck deep in a remodeling project that's consuming their lives. Bad times are going around, but despite some moments of melancholy, I'm mostly immune thus far, and I am super grateful for that. Even Stevens indeed.

MOC-KERY: So my beloved last pair of Nike Air Tenacity sneakers have finally gone beyond the "presentable" level, and I am left looking for new shoes. I hate this. My favorite kinds of shoes are "moccassin" styled -- low top, close fitting casual shoes, black in color, simple in design, and without laces of any kind. Finding such a shoe in my size (12) has proven problematic. My quest continues ...

That's about the size of it, bonk bonk.