This Week for Happy Hour: Death by Autotune

Come down to Rhino Bar for half-price drinks today for Happy Hour, 5-9pm, to celebrate the 26^th birthday of none other than T-Pain.  Yeah, you read that correctly.  I said T-Pain.  The autotune rapper guy.

 

This isn’t your average birthday party.  Most birthday partys exist to celebrate and honor the aging individual.  This birthday party, on the other hand, is really more to celebrate that the individual is aging.

Here’s the thing about T-Pain: he is a Grammy wining vocalist, and nobody knows what his voice sounds like.  That’s just tedious and annoying.  Plus, one time he came by Rhino with his entourage, but they were like, “Whey de club?” and then they went to Modern, next door, for the thumpy music.  Not a fan, my friends.  Perhaps they were thinking of the well-known Oscar Wilde quote, “If one hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it with one’s own conversation.”  Perhaps.

I know what you’re thinking: who are you to be so critical of the esteemed and highly decorated T-Pain?  After all, it’s like Jack Handy said, “Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.”

Maybe you’re right.  Maybe I shouldn’t criticize the guy. 

Nope, you’re wrong.  I should.

First of all, the whole autotune thing is just embarrassing for hip hop in general, because that shit is soft.  Imagine Busta Rhymes or, even better, the late great Tupac or Biggie using autotune.  If they were still alive, either one would have the other shot for making shameful, sissy, autotuned music.

The only good thing to ever come from autotune is the Gregory Brothers and the would-be Lincoln Park rapist:

So never mind whether T-Pain can sing or not.  The autotune is the problem, airbrushing the music scene into a fraudulent, mechanized formula, and that dum-dum is promoting it.  All I’m asking for is some art that came from a person.  And for T-Pain and the Black Eyed Peas to be electrocuted by an autotune microphone malfunction.  Not to death.  But, you know, a good zinger. 

Anyhow, Captain Autotune is another year older.  And another year closer to retirement.  That calls for a zinger, which, by the way, are half-price for happy hour!  Come keep it real at the Rhino tonight.  Party continues upstairs until 2:30!

See you there!

This Week for Happy Hour: It's Gonna Be a Riot!

September 9^th, 1971: the four-day prison riot at Attica Correctional Facility in NY is set off after the death of a radical activist prisoner at San Quentin brings preexisting inmate discontent to a boil.

About 1000 of the prison’s 2200 inmates rioted and seized control of the prison, taking 33 staff hostages.  After four days of negotiations, Governor Rockefeller authorized the retaking of the prison by use of force.  Ten hostages and twenty nine inmates were killed.

There have been moments when I’ve wondered what would happen if Rhino’s patrons stormed the castle, jumping the bar, subduing the bartenders, and pouring drinks themselves.  It would be madness, and by virtue of sheer numbers, essentially impossible to prevent.  The bartenders would lose the dock.

But then I think, that would never happen.  Because if there is one big difference between Rhino Bar and Attica Prison, it’s that the Rhino inmates are at all times appeased.  Not that Rhino rioters (or, Rhioters) wouldn’t find out fast enough that the rows of poorly marked bottles don’t mix themselves into magically delicious combinations (except for whiskey and whiskey), but more importantly, a man with a beer in his hand and a smile on his face never rioted.  Not for realzy.

A riot, in the words of Dr. King, is the language of the unheard.  It’s an illustration of, simultaneously, frustration and discontent.  I swear all they needed to do at Attica was offer the boys some beer and an extra roll of toilet paper, and everybody would have started seeing eye to eye.  It’s like they never saw Shawshank Redemption in 1971 New York.  Oh, Andy.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but 2011 has sort of been the year of the riot.  Not in the US so much, but all across much of the Arab world and recently in the UK.  Well I think our time has come.  Here’s what’s gonna happen.  Get all liquored up at Friday Happy Hour and brainstorm for a reason to riot and decide on a general focal point.  Then everyone will head out and wreak general havoc, mob-style, all night long until Saturday morning.  Then everyone will run screaming back to Rhino Bar like a war scene from Bravheart for the Ohio State game, ready to start drinking again, at which point I will tell the following joke:

A man and a woman started to have sex in the middle of a dark forest. After about 15 minutes of it, the man finally gets up and says, "Damn, I wish I had a flashlight!" The woman says, "Me too, you've been eating grass for the past ten minutes!"

Then you’ll giggle and say, “Oh, Mr. Bartender, you’re a riot.”

And I’ll say, “No, you’re a fucking riot!”

Then Rhino will appease you with beers until the riot is gone from you. 

Come celebrate your pacified disposition at Rhino Bar with Half-Price Happy Hour, every Friday 5-9pm.  See you there!

Cheers,

Finnegan

Week 1 NFL Picks:

1. Green Bay vs. New Orleans: Under 48
2. Teaser: Arizona -1; Tennessee +8