What Not To Say to The Band

Actual comments from strangers following a gig:

You mean they let just anybody get up there and sing? My girlfriend wants to try.

Don't you know any good songs, like Titanic?

You have another job, right?

Actual comments from friends following a gig:

It was okay. Yeah, it was, uh, good.

Well, now I've seen you sing.

It was okay but you've ruined Avalon for me.

I can't believe you just get up there.

You know you're fat, right?

And my favorite: during a staff meeting, about 36 hours after a gig,  someone who had heard me sing turned to me and snapped, "Too much vibrato! Can't you try to control that?"

A few friends (musicians) have said the following and I think it's just about right:

Well done!

I enjoyed that!

Well sung!

They left it at that. That's fine by me. I don't want to discuss the line-up with everyone I meet: much of the artistic arrangement is a collaboration and I have more and more confidence in how we put things together. We have a new set and I think it's a killer, very diverse musically and with an interesting house-party approach to how the songs flow together. I haven't heard any other groups take this approach to music and I like the fact we're putting our own spin on things. We're not a cover band and I'm dead lucky to be working with such a talented guitarist who can play jazz, blues, lead guitar and straight out rockabilly--not to mention pick--with such ease. It takes a lot of rehearsal to build that sort of musical intimacy, where you can glance at each other and shoot off an improvisation that works, and we're finally there. My thanks to the audiences we dragged out there during the first few months--many moments were NOT pleasant to witness, I'm sure, but then again, birth isn't an easy thing to watch.  We're almost there. We've started getting paid gigs, and we're getting better all the time. I'm sure the weird comments will continue to flourish as I attract the crazies, but that's part of the deal. 

Putting Down the Doggy, Thrifty Chinese Style

Yes, it has been some time since last I blogged: I still have two jobs, I sing with two bands (one is over I think but I'm not sure) I've spent two weekends filming a pilot, still have two guinea pigs the size of overweight chihuahuas, but I have only one doggie, my beloved original model. The other doggy started having seizures--a hell of a thing to watch--and given his advanced age and the growth on his junk (his favorite toy) I took the horrible step of having him put down. 

The walk to the vet was a nightmare--my ayi disapproved of spending any money on putting him down, and offered to poison him for free, with a quick chuck of the body into the rubbish bin. Then, a stay of execution occurred when my Chinese granny's Peke passed away and she asked me to let Bobby live for another week or so as she couldn't bear to have two Pekinese doggies go to heaven in the same week. Finally, I knew it was time, asked Ayi to come with me, and set off in the rain with Bobby on a leash, trusting us and trotting along with his wide Peke smile. First, for some reason known only to Ayi, we began to trot in the wrong direction. "You'll see where we're going," she promised. We ended up at a dog grooming place where, on the doorstep, she asked the dog groomer (and I swear to God I am not kidding) if the groomer had anything to kill the dog with as (again, no kidding) "The vet costs 500 kuai and we're looking for a thrifty way to get rid of it." A thought ran through my head--this is not the woman you should run to with an unplanned pregnancy for sure--and even the groomer was appalled. After receiving a firm "No" ("Are you sure there's not a heavy brick or something lying around that you're not using?") we headed off in the cold and rain to the vet's office.

 I was furious and even Bobby lost his customary good humor and seemed to slink unhappily towards his fate. Once at the vet's office, Ayi explained what we wanted. I spoke to the vet, described the symptoms, and had the vet's approval --even approbation--for what we were about to do. They allowed us to stay with him while it happened, so we were holding him during the first injection which knocked him out, his head lolling like a sleepy teddy bear, and when the final injection was added and he passed immediately, without pain, Ayi reared her head back and howled, adding a heart broken wail of "Booobeeeeeeee!" I couldn't believe it--this is a woman who offered to cure his testicular cancer with two bricks and wanted to off him with rat poison, but there she was howling like a Klingon performing a ritual for a comrade killed in action. It was only fitting. There was some stir in the outside office (Look, a foreigner crying over her dog!) but to my surprise it wasn't like that,  it was more of a feeling of sympathy for us, and a wave of fear for the time when their own beloved doggies would pass. 

Princess doggie number one has felt a little lost since that day and we are not planning on replacing Bobby. I figure another rescue dog will turn up one day and I'm not in a hurry to replace my lovely smiling companion. He was a darling little thing and I am glad he's out of pain now. I sleep better without his grunts and snores under the bed, or the constant barking ("Someone's on the stairs! The stairs! The stairs! Now they're gone!") and I can walk around barefoot without someone trying to lick my feet. Still, a work to my friends: if I have seizures, don't let Ayi take me to the hairdressers, and check her hand bag for bricks. There is a thing known as being TOO thrifty and I am not taking any more chances.

If Wishes Were Horses, I'd Get to Ride

I grew up lower middle class, and this meant we despised the people immediately above us as well as those below us, namely people with horses.   Horses were, I was told, nervous animals and people who loved them were crazy. In fact, all animal lovers were nuts, and people with exotic pets were not only crazy but probably neglectful of their children as well. I can attest to some extent on the last one--I have yet to meet someone with a pet monkey who was a good parent or even a decent pet owner, and I recently dated someone with a snake. (Not a code word here, he really had a snake. And I wouldn't have gone out with him but I had recently met a kind of interesting co-worker who had a tattoo and snakes but was versed in Anglo Saxon poetry, so I thought, what the hell, give the guy with a snake a shot.) For those of you who care, it was a python and he raised it from a tiny snake from an exotic pet market he found here in Beijing. He made the mistake of bringing it to my house and threatening to feed the guinea pigs to it. I am not that fond of my guinea pigs but I am their owner and treat them very well and was not going to see them being terrified and teased and turned into dinner, even if it would relieve me of spending over a hundred bucks a month on guinea pig feed. So out he went. Both guinea pigs are now about half the size of a football and getting bigger by the second, so perhaps it was my loss after all--but I couldn't bear the thought of Squeaky and Snowy feeling panic or distress or pain. BTW, the dogs were out getting groomed so they missed the excitement, although they freaked out when they got home and smelled his patchouli that lingered in the air like the image of a  bloated corpse burned into your retinas. (It's still there.)

As to horses, well--in truth, I loved horses and when I had enough money together would try to organize a trip with other friends to rent a horse for an hour. I didn't have enough money for a lesson, mind you, so most of my time on horseback was spent trying to giddy-up, but I felt the most tremendous guilt for liking horses, a liking that began well before I read National Velvet or Misty of Chincoteague.  I still like them, I still wish I could ride properly, and I still hope that some day I will learn how. I boosted myself into middle class with the dint of my college education, and I lifted myself out of middle class morality by dint of having absolutely no money, no social security, and no social status in the form of a husband or even at this point family. I get to like what I like, and if that means taking in rescue dogs and a rescue guinea pig (and getting that one a guinea pig of its own so it wouldn't be alone) then so be it.  I'm not neglecting my child--hell, she's in a good university and doing well--and my dogs don't have more clothes than I do, although I do kind of envy one of her this little pink coat that has the sweetest pink bones embroidered on the collar. Here's the benefit of being the crazy single lady on the block: I can do whatever the hell I want, and like whatever I want, and there's no one here to look down their nose for my doing it. Yay me.

My Life As a Singer

I've been blessed with the ability to perform and to carry a tune, which means at some point I've been on stage singing, either with a band or as part of that divine thing, musical theatre. Musical theatre is a lot of fun to do, but excruciatingly awful for most to watch. I'd rather NOT see Starlight Express, thank you, nor do I ever want to hear One Rock And Roll Too Many ever sung again, particularly by that chick from a past season on American Idol who also did that creepy baby wail.

At one point in my life I sang professionally, not as a diva on some operatic stage, but as a regular feature on a sleazy nightclub circuit in Tokyo. I started out as a bar girl, meaning I sat at tables, wiped the fingerprints off the clients' glasses, and stirred their heavily watered down whiskey and water for them. Since it had a KTV component--hey, it WAS Japan in the 80's--I was also paid to get up and sing for the customers, their choice. This evolved eventually into a regular gig with a regular set list and my very own eight-track cassette tape which traveled with me from club to club. It didn't occur to me until years later that I looked a lot like a prostitute, as I jumped from one waiting car to another, with different clubs sending different drivers out to pick me up and get to me the next gig. I have sung "My Way" more than any other white girl living, but I have never sung it cold sober and I hope I never have to. (Must write sometime about the Soapland gig which gave me such a severe case of self-worthlessness that I didn't sing again for twenty years.)


My newfound life, post-Baby Girl leaving for college, has sent me the opportunity to get back up on stage again. So, I've formed a few groups to do a few numbers, and we've had the usual discussions on what to call ourselves. I'm usually good at names and I proposed the ones we're using straight off the bat. No, I'm not telling you what they are. But I then came up with some of my favorites, which I will share with you:

An all-girl, over fifty years of age band called Iron Maidenhead. We never smile, and we play hard rock.

Another all-girl rock band, Nine Inch Nail Salon. We play a fusion of New Romantics and Death Metal.

And, the last one in honor of my friend's truly horrifying wife, Skank. Perhaps Skank can open for Iron Maidenhead sometime. (About the truly horrifying wife: I stopped by their house one day to drop off a yogurt maker and she answered the door in a bondage outfit and said, "You here for threesome?" and I said no, just dropping off the yogurt maker for your husband and she replied, "He not here. You have five hundred kuai, I let you watch." So yeah, Skank. Could be so much worse.)

Another note: in a country where no one can use English correctly to identify even and odd numbers (even big-ass theatres refer to seats as "single and doubles" when they mean odd and even numbers--and your tickets have all the evens clustered together in rows on the right, and odds in rows on the left--everyone seems to know how to use the term "threesome." Why, God, why? 

Perfect Hostess Brownies

I believe Perfect Hostess is the name of a song by the Korgis, and it's one of my aims in life. I have thrown some very dismal parties, but I have a knack for throwing together good jam sessions. It's easy: get together some musicians, throw in food. Alcohol not needed.

I strive to serve something nice to each guest, whether it's their favorite diet root beer, or a choice of iced green or black tea. At a jam session at my house the other night, which followed close on the heels of an 11-hour work day, I had soup, grilled pastrami and cheese sandwiches (because I was starving) and brownies for anyone who didn't want soup and sandwiches. I also had hot green tea with honey and I periodically floated out of the session whenever my vocals weren't needed and heated up more hot water, filled tea cups, passed out napkins, and all that. You know, hostessy stuff. One musician left around nine, the other around ten.

The next day the guy who left first asked me with a smirk if my brownies had "done the trick." I was sort of puzzled--done WHAT trick? He then asked if the other guy had "thanked me for the brownies by staying over," i.e., dick for brownies. This is incredibly offensive to me---I bake to release stress, I set a nice table because I have that sort of background, and I feed people out of good manners. I had grandmothers and a mother who would have died of shame if someone left the house without having had at least a cup of tea and a nosh. Poor people always feed you anyway. I  packaged up all the brownies and sent them home with the second guy as he's super busy, not feeling well, and also, I don't like to have brownies around the house where I will eat them. I've had a bit of a relapse, not quite out of remission but not feeling well, and I've been on huge amounts of medication which makes me retain a lot of water and cough like a chain-smoking house madame. My joints hurt, my elbows are so swollen I can't wear my button down shirts,  and I can't keep to my usual exercise regime although I do move a lot. The last thing I need is to sit and eat my feelings with a pan of brownies. (Although reading through this tempts me to do exactly that.)

Anyone who thinks brownies are all I have to offer as bait doesn't know squat about me. However, the brownie recipe I've come up with is divine, and is the icing on the cake of anyone who really DOES get my overall vibe.

You can  microwave these--six minutes, full power (I have a 700 watt oven) in a square 8 by 8 cake pan does the trick nicely.

First, melt a half cup of butter and let it cool for at least five minutes.
While that's going on,
beat the crap out of three small eggs (two large ones)
Add one cup of sugar, and a big teaspoon of homemade vanilla (brandy works just fine)
Beat until quite thick and fluffy and smooth.
Dump in 3/4 cup flour, 6 tablespoons of cocoa powder, and the half cup of butter. Yes, it can be self-raising flour, but plain baking flour is best.
Stir just long enough to combine the ingredients.
Pour into a square cake pan, and bake as directed above.
You can stir in other things, such as toasted nuts, crushed peppermint sticks, etc. A light sprinkle of mini-chocolate chips does it for me.

These are simple, but simply delicious. Just like me. (Especially the simple part.)

Chocolate

A lot of people claim they like chocolate, but what they really like is candy. "Ooooo, MUST have some chocolate," they say, reaching for a slab of brown Laffy Taffy. That is not chocolate. Chocolate is chocolate, great crisp-breaking hunks of pure chocolate madness, unsullied by whipped fillings made of hog's feet and marshmallow, enhanced perhaps by a goodly handful of nuts. There is one day every month where I must have chocolate or I will kill someone. The rest of the time, chocolate is consumed simply to feed my soul, and not as a form of gun control.

I was told as a small child by my mother that chocolate is the only flavor, and that vanilla is merely the absence of chocolate. As a consequence, I never tried any of the other flavors and missed out on ice cream such as butter pecan or raspberry. She has since told me that she was joking when she made that statement but I wonder sometimes, as I have yet to see her dig into any dessert that wasn't laced without at least a generous dollop of home made chocolate sauce (her grandmother's lemon bars the only exception to that rule.)

My mother loathed many things, including M and Ms, and I never had that classic cookie, the M and M cookie, until I was 47.  She was passionately fond of the chocolate and nut combination found on the outside of Rollo candy bars, and much of my childhood consisted of coming downstairs to a smoke-filled living room, and seeing the gutted remains of a Rollo resting uneasily in an ashtray covered with cigarette butts, the imprint of my mother's teeth where she had nibbled off the chocolate covering still clear in the light brown fondant filling. The Rollo candy bar is no longer available, so my mother, when she indulges, has to go straight for the chocolate covered peanuts.

I get my mother on many levels, and I understand her more as I get older: she has a wicked sense of humor which I did not relate to as a child and I was often confused by whatever was making her laugh, a statement echoed by my own daughter when discussing my shortcomings as a parent. I still don't understand why M and Ms are, in her opinion, vulgar, as she is the one who taught me to suck on the casing long enough to for the dye to come off, thus staining my lips red, or green, or whatever color I fancied. (She preferred red.) I indulged in many many M and Ms when in the US, where I found coconut, raspberry dark chocolate, and pretzel M and Ms. All were divine, and none are available here, where we're lucky to find peanut M and Ms that aren't actually stale.  It's just as well: the raspberry dark chocolate would be terrific in brownies, and as for the pretzel ones...well, let's just say, they are too close to the perfect snack to be something I'd want to have readily available. I ate my first pretzel M and M on a flight and alarmed fellow passengers with my first grunt of pleased astonishment: subsequent noises included a groan or two. You can blame the noises on turbulence but you know, and I know, it was due to the demonically good combination of crispy, smooth, salty, chocolatey kibble. Ah, pretzel M and Ms: bachelorette chow at its finest! The perfect PMS snack.  

Update: How Fat White Guys Get Laid in China

Update! Special alert! I have written far too much about white men being treated like gods in China by the local women and I swore to leave that topic forever. However, I did have an update I think is worthy of posting: according to a friend, if you go to Maggie's early in the evening, there are no women there.

My new friend Thor reports that he went to Maggie's on my recommendation and there was not one single chick there. Not one. It was full of mostly white men in various stages of attractiveness: some young and thin, some old and fat, some well dressed, all with different expressions of hopefulness and disappointment playing on their features. It was only nine in the evening, but it was a Saturday night. So go figure. He finally left. However, my friend Little Nicky (yes, that's really his name) went in around three a.m. and claims he scooped up two for the price of one. (He said, rather gallantly, that they're all fairly attractive after you take out your contact lenses, beer goggles be damned.)

So I don't know. I'm kind of old and I don't spend much time in night clubs unless I'm watching a friend perform or having a gig myself, the latter happening very rarely these days. I think I should actually go to Maggie's myself and I've asked my friend The Rose to arrange for us to broadcast one of his shows out of there so we can report on the action blow-by-blow, so to speak. If nothing else, I can write about the food as I understand they serve a hell of a hotdog. That's not code for anything, I hear they do have good food and that's about my only interest, aside from checking out the ladies and the skanky men who frequent the bar. So afraid I'll bump into a former boss there...well, as long as it isn't a student's parent, everything should be fine.