Sunday, May 31, 2015

My Night on the Town, or on the Campus, Anyway

I snapped a quick pic of Glyneth between songs.


I was feeling bored. The almost-doctor told me I could go for walks, play my instruments, watch mindless TV socialize without booze - basically anything but run or study. Judge Alex suggested dancing. At first it seemed like a lame idea, but one of the guys from one of my study groups stopped by, and I asked him if he felt like going dancing. He said yes.

Our options are limited around here. Clubs don't want anyone under 21, and I avoid frat events the way normal people avoid the ebola virus. The guy checked on his phone to see if anything semi-official was happening on the main campus of our university and found something. We had fun and stayed for over an hour.

Afterward as we  were walking to his car, we noticed a coffee house sort of thing with an an open mike. He said we should go inside because he'd heard that a particular girl sometimes performed there who is so bad that it's seriously funny. No one has any idea if she's in on the joke and it's all an act, or if she's for real. 

First this really funny guy was performing briefly. We're not supposed to take videos while we're in there. Everyone else probably does it anyway, but I'm rule-abiding by nature. I found a video of him on Youtube and will try to post it.

The the girl came out to do her act. She claims to write all her own material -- her own music, that is. She uses existing lyrics from anyone and everyone. The bizarre thing is that she uses the very same melody for every song she performs. After every song, she announces that no one has the right to borrow her music without her permission, so anyone who wants to use one of her songs should come talk to her and perhaps a deal can be worked out. I can't tell if that, too,is part of the joke, or if she really believes that anyone would ever be caught dead singing one of her lame melodies. 

Her basic melody is something like mi, re, do, (low) la
(low) so, (low) la, do. Do, re, mi, so la (held a little longer) so (held longer). Repeat.   if there's a refrain, she goes into so, la, so, mi, fa, mi, re, do, fa, mi, re, do, (low) la, (low) so, do. That's it -- her entire melodic repertoire. She makes necessary adjustments so that the words sort of scan, but they don't always scan well at all.

She sang "Jesus Loves Me" (making a point to announce that she was being ironic in singing the song as she considered herself very Jewish this week), "Proud Mary,"  "State of Shock" by Green Day, "Some Nights" by Fun, and Dan Fogelberg's "Run for the Roses." She actually may have gone on forever and may still be singing; we had to leave during "Run for the Roses" because I was laughing so hard that she was giving me the stink eye. The odd thing is that this place doesn't even serve booze, but I'm sure plenty of that and worse is smuggled in. 

She introduced herself as "Glyneth" (I have no idea how she actually spells it) but said she plans on changing her name as soon as she comes up with something better. I should put her in contact with my Aunt Cristelle and Uncle Mendel. They're the ones who came up with Antarctica Meringue and Blitzen Manx. Surely they could help her with an inventive name.

For the record, Glyneth can mean-mug any of us from now until Armageddon, and can threaten all she likes, but I'm pretty sure she holds no copyright on her peculiar note sequence. So if anyone wants to borrow the melody, though only God knows why anyone would want to borrow it, you should feel free without fear of any legal recrimination.



                  the funny guy; he didn't do this song

4 comments:

  1. Gwyneth looks like a real prize winner.

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  2. The picture is actually flattering. She's either bat shit crazy or a freaking genius. I lean toward bat shit crazy as the correct diagnosis.
    i have to get my dad really drunk the next time he's here (not hard to do: just put booze within his reach) and take him to the coffee house. He'd make such a scene that Glyneth (if that's what she's still calling herself by then) would attack him. For one thing, he'd probably take her guitar away from her and tune it.

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  3. Bat shit crazy can be very entertaining! If you manage to get your dad to the coffee house for an encore performance, invite me too!

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  4. Oops! Glyneth... I guess I had Gwyneth Paltrow on the brain!

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