The Hapless MFA

Because we sort of are.


Hapless.

The Hapless MFA is written by Chieh Chieng and Lance Uyeda

Tyrone Gustaf McDaniels, UC Irvine MFA, Fiction.
One of Us: Tyrone Gustaf McDaniels
Location: Outside Radio Shack

Tyrone G. McDaniels, UC Irvine MFA, Fiction, 1983. His thesis, A Lovely Summer Time (of Summertime), is a novel told from the point of view of a twelve-year-old Mississippi girl named Butters Consanguine, whose butterfly collecting career goes awry when she catches in her net an escaped convict named Dinkey Brutus. Here, McDaniels demonstrates the crackling MFA wit that earned him a spot in the nation's most prestigious MFA program (Iowa who? Oh, SNAP!).

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Poyzin

I really liked the message in David O. Russell’s movie I ♥ Huckabee’s that says random occurrences are constantly happening around us and they happen for a reason. There is a connection between the guy who made your crappuccino this morning and the guy you almost kill in a drunken rage at the karaoke bar. Things repeat themselves in the strangest ways sometimes and it happens for a reason. Someone or something is trying to send you a message…but what is it?

I experienced one of these moments last night at one of the most depressing karaoke encounters in my life. An old high school friend runs the Trivia Night at this bar in an Old Town section of a once-small town in Northern California. I felt like getting out, so I decided to go. I’d been to this bar a few times over the past three months, and I hadn’t gone in over a month, so I thought it might be fun. As I was sitting at the bar, waiting for the Trivia Master to arrive, standard bar juke box music was blaring on the speakers. AC/DC, Rush, Skynyrd…but then something came on I hadn’t heard in years: “Something to Believe In” by Poison. I was taken back to the year 1987. I was in junior high and that goddamn song was everywhere, preceded by its even wussier older sister, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” Now I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear “Rose” play on the juke box; that’s one you’ll still hear once in a while. But “Something to Believe In?” Who the hell still listens to this crap?

Poison. Remember those guys? The frosted hair? The frayed jean jackets? The leather pants? The mascara and eyeliner? Some of the dumbest stage-names-that-are-supposed-to-sound-real you’ve ever heard? C.C. Deville? Bobby Dall? Rikki Rockett? That’s right, folks, “Rikki” with two ‘k’s and “Rockett” with two ‘t’s. Nice. Nobody’s gonna tell them how to spell their names. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Mr. Rockett made that life-altering decision. I wonder if he was on the can? Or maybe high? Possibly both? Of course, if this band had formed within the last couple of years, they would have spelled their name Poizon or Poyzin. I once had a student who wrote the saying “It Ain’t Metal Unless It’s Spelled Rong” in black sharpie on her backpack. I suppose we could look at these guys as trailblazers in the school of rock ’n’ roll misspellings. Attention, members of Korn, Trapt, Wurkt, Limp Bizkit…you will address Him as Bret Michaels, forefather. I’m sure he’d be into that.

After Trivia Night had come to a close (my team—dubbed the Kenny Loggins #1 Fan Club—ended up winning a free pitcher), the karaoke began. This bar is in a section of what is referred to as “Old Town,” meaning the buildings have been around for a very long time, the streets are supposed to look antiquated, and you’re supposed to leave with an overall pleasant old-timey feeling. Unfortunately for this particular Old Town, there isn’t much to see besides the train station, old bars, and meeting halls full of recovering drunks. The still-working-at-it-drunks like to sing free karaoke, so they often flock to this place my friend works at. Karaoke is run by this fellow who keeps a Mohawk so everybody can see the tattoos on his skull. I’ll just say his stripe of hair is usually dyed green or purple, and the tattoos are of a famous comic book villain. And he uses that character’s name as his own. Yeah.

Karaoke was especially pathetic on this night, because the bar was unusually empty. I’d been to a few of these events before, and I’ve seen some outright big crowds in this place. But last night was just dead. And the singers were terrible, as they often are at any karaoke bar. But something strange happened about forty-five minutes after the singing had begun. A woman got up to sing a certain little ditty by Poison. Right now you’re probably wondering: “Was it ‘Every Rose’?” No it wasn’t. It was indeed “Something to Believe In” and it was indeed a horrible rendition of a terrible song. She sounded as if she had been gargling with razor blades just five minutes before.

But I’m not here to make fun of the singer. This song—this monstrosity—had entered into my stream of consciousness twice within two hours. This was an amazing coincidence. That damn hook—“Give me something to believe in”—was trying to tell me something. I looked around for other possible secret messages or signs. A heavenly light coming from above? A sacred text hidden beneath a bar stool? Aside from bad singers, bad weight problems, and worse moustaches, I couldn’t find a thing. When I told the group at my table (now three former high school friends) that this was the second time I’d heard the song tonight (they hadn’t arrived yet when it was playing on the juke box), one of them said something that really freaked me out. She had heard it on the radio earlier that day! Between the two of us, we had heard this god-awful-butt-rock-nugget-that-time-should-have-forgotten three times in one day! What is the secret meaning of all of this? This must be some kind of foreboding sign!

Then it came to me: I suspect Poison will be launching another attempt at a “comeback” in the near future, probably this summer. Except this time, instead of releasing another unnecessary “Best Of” or “Greatest Hits” collection, they will be drugging our water supplies with some sort of mind-altering drug that only lets us hear “Something to Believe In,” “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” and “Unskinny Bop.” When we turn on the radio, it won’t matter what the DJs are playing or what they’re talking about; all we will be able to hear is Poison. When we attempt to converse with our friends, loved ones, and co-workers, all we will be able to hear are the words “What’s got you so jumpy? / Why can’t you sit still, yeah? / Like gasoline you wanna pump me. / And leave me when you get your fill.” Damn, that Bret Michaels sure knows how to write a brilliant fuckin’ simile. Prepare for the worst, my friends. The gods have spoken, and they have told us to do the “Unskinny Bop.” All the time.

--Robot's Mother

[Every so often, from its secret base in Sacramento, California, Robot's Mother (www.myspace.com/robotsmother) will beam down to the HMFA a transmission on music related matters.]