Manlio Rules

ok, so i forgot about the karaoke article when i said previously that i wouldn’t have much to write about this week. I’ve been thinking about this article quite a bit, since recently there have been a ton of parties involving karaoke. i’m not sure if it’s become a more acceptable party activity, or if it always was and i’ve finally reached that age. in any event, i feel qualified to write about it because my ex girlfriend was a karaoke addict, and many of my nights for a year or two ended falling asleep at a bar while she performed song after song at some of the shittiest dive bars in NY. so i’ve seen my share of karaoke.

tips are after the jump: (more…)

i don’t have a ton of things to write about this week, so some quick love/hate hits:

I’m loving:

-playing with a band again, specifically when i hear neil start one of his fills and know that we’re going crazy go nuts into the chorus.
-getting 10 hours of sleep on a tuesday night. i mean wow. i felt so rested and ready to rock this AM
-having dreams where i’m running around shooting stormtroopers
-seeing the wide wide range of employers who see my monster.com resume and think that i might be what they’re looking for
-warmish days in november and december
-my ipod mini
-the Aeon Flux DVD. i never got into Aeon Flux, but it’s great. i can’t believe they showed it on MTV.

I’m hating:

-the way the patriots look.
-my job. specifically the E***n project
-scheduling practice time for the band. no city is less conducive to band logistics than NYC. seriously. if this were philly, boston, dallas, seattle, or any other city i’ve spent time in, this would be much much easier
-having super stormtroopers (looking very similar to new BSG cylons) show up in my dream, forcing me to run like crazy all around the ship.

or if it’ll scare him off peanut butter.

arg. i already wrote this entry once, but then managed to delete it somehow. so here we go a second time. it will be briefer, in bullet point form

-did thanksgiving in lexington
-food was good
-family is good, brother needs a new job where they don’t make him work friday of thanksgiving
-i go to the burlington mall a lot when i’m home

(edit - the burlington mall, for those who are unfamiliar, is the huge mega shopping center located in burlington, MA, maybe 5-10 minutes away from my house. it has evolved from a trashy mall with lots of tobacconists and general stores, to the gold standard for the modern day mall, filled with high end retailers and lots of “fancy” restaurants (like pizzeria uno). now there’s even an apple store there. across the street from the mall is a huge barnes and noble, a 14 screen megaplex, tower records, EMS, and Newbury Comics, where i used to spend hours and hours of my weekends. there’s also chili’s, which features a bar open till 1AM on the weekends, and delicious baby back ribs)

-i also eat compulsively

(edit: i mean, like every 10 minutes i’m at the fridge. i won’t go into what i ate this weekend, but it was easily 5x my normal food intake)

-i could use a more substantive relationship with my father

(edit: one that involves more than shopping, eating, and watching TV in separate rooms)

-mom and mont are great in smaller doses
-my new step niece resembles a mario brothers turnip
-shout out to PT
-shout out to gabe and lily and chili’s burlington
-hopefully only 3 more weeks at LW
-photos below:

ha ha ha

so friday night was kevin’s 30th birthday.

Stephen and i started the night by staying at work till 6:30, cause we’re super cool. then we headed down to the west village to have a few drinks at lyandra’s karaoke fundraiser for her law school trip to mississippi. drinks were had, but karaoke was not sung, which is for the best, since no one wants to see karaoke done by a guy who can actually sing. women yes, men no. actually, this is a good time to get into my theory of karaoke. in order, this is what people what to see at karaoke:

1. their friends sing well
2. their friends sing badly
3. strangers (usually women) sing well
4. strangers (women) sing badly
5. random dudes singing joke songs (bust a move!)
6. random dudes actually singing

I find this to be gender unspecific. that is to say, my female friends would also rather watch women sing than other guys. i have no idea why. and so, unless i’m with lots of friends, no karaoke.

in any event, the fundraiser was a good time, we stayed there till about 9:15, then grabbed some food and headed to loreley.

kevin’s party was fun, there was a good crowd and everyone seemed to be having a rockin time. the great thing about the basement of loreley is that there’s a bar down there so you don’t actually have to deal with the upstairs, and by about 2AM you could tell who was really going to need some help getting home that night. one of kevin’s friends from work was so incredibly drunk that i swear she spent the last hour she was there walking back and forth from the door outside to back downstairs, swaying the entire time. i’ve been there, so i had sympathy, but my offer to help was met by nary a glance, which makes sense. i forget that when you’re that fucked up, you tend to think that everyone who’s trying to help you is just some asshole trying to get with the drunk girl. in any event, i hope she got home ok, and that her hangover wasn’t that bad on saturday.

I stayed out super late, and “dj’d” the final set from 3:30 to 4:15 or whatever. there’s really nothing like closing out the party by playing songs that are decidedly anti party, and then leaving. i ended it with coldplay, which is REALLY lame now that i think about it, but at the time it seemed like a super idea. i also discovered why dj’ing is clearly the best thing in the world, as within 5 minutes of getting up there, the cutest woman left at the party was coming over to talk to me, asking where else i “played”. which is funny to me considering that i was up there with my ipod mini fading songs in and out and fast forwarding. but i now see why being a dj must be a ball.

of course, since i’m now old, friday night basically did me in for the rest of the weekend. saturday i spent mostly in bed, watching dvd’s and trying to make my head stop hurting. sunday i went to my guitar lesson and then worked for most of the rest of the day. good times, good times. freelance work is great, but i realized that i now basically work a 6 day week, and that’s not as great.

anyway, photos of kevin’s are below, and wild cherry sara has her dance-centered take on the party here:

i admit that having a fairly unusual name can be a problem from time to time. for one thing, it’s given me quite a complex about mispronounciations, and even after 28 years, i cannot correct someone from calling me MAN-leo without seeming like i’m a bit of an arrogant prick. and it’s awesome in crowded bars to yell my name several times to strangers who i could care less about talking to ever again. also, when most people meet me after hearing my name, they are dissappointed, probably because they were expecting some 6 foot 2 chiseled example of an italian man, and not a 5 foot 9 balding pudgy american.

but the plus is that there’s not a whole lot of competition on google. as of yesterday, my new portfolio pops in the top 5 when you search for “manlio”, “lo conte”, or “loconte”, and it’s number one for “manlio loconte” or “manlio lo conte”. which is all good stuff. also, women occasionally find the name to be sexy and overlook some/most of my physical shortcomings…

this is a special cross post with sara’s blog. hopefully the first of many

so, to set the scene. We’re playing the sweet meats. we start a little early, which means that we’re not quite as drunk as we like to be starting a game (edit: with the exception of Sara). so Matt, Kevin and i take a nice tequila shot. chilled. of course, the bartender ends up putting too much in the shaker, so it ends up being 2 tequila shots each. wow. i should note that i don’t really do tequila shots anymore after one night out with Briehan a few years ago, where I puked my guts up, then called my gf at 3AM and dumped her. so, suffice to say, i’m not sure how this will affect me.

Teams are as we’ve been doing all season. Alex and Karen, Kevin and Sara, Me and Daya, and Matt with whoever does the best from the first round. Alex/Karen and Kevin/Sara start us off.

these guys are good. they’re calling their shots and hitting them. no one appears to be a dead weight on the team, everyone seems to be a sharpshooter. on our side, Kevin is all over the place to start, but Sara is rolling like she does it for a living, so we’re holding our own. Alex and Karen are solid as always, and we win a 7-4 game to go up 1-0 in the match.

the second game is a little odd. Daya and I jump out and give us a commanding 3-1 lead after 3 games, but then we have a few odd turns where we think we’re closest and it turns out we’re not. daya and i leave at least 6 points on the court over the next two games, and matt and Sara can’t pick us up. we lose game 2 3-7

game 3: everyone’s in. Daya and I split (always a teary eyed event) and she rounds out the Matt/Kevin/Sara side while I form up team ITP with Alex and Karen. the games are tight. Sweet Meats are rolling well, but for some reason they sub in a newbie, who isn’t all that good. they get 3 points in the 3rd game, but team ITP reaches back and throws down 3 in the 4th. with the score at 6-4 (us) Kevin et al get 3 balls DQ’d, giving them 2 points with 2 left to throw. luckily, their last minute sub totally blows her shot, and the other guy (their weakest link, though still a thrower) cracks under the pressure and shorts it. so we escape with only a -2, making it 6-6. the last game alex just takes over, throws a wicked opener, and they blow 4 balls trying to beat his first, and still don’t do it. we win!

to get ourselves motivated for the last game, we were very negative about our opponents, but in retrospect, this team was more like us than any that we’ve played. except for the t-shirts, they seemed to take things to about the same level of commitment, and while they weren’t the friendliest team we’ve played, they were complimetary and graceful in defeat. i hope we don’t have to play them again.

as some of you may or may not remember, about a year ago i decided to get pretty seriously into online dating. this lasted for about 6 months, and i resulted in maybe 10-15 dates with 5 or 6 different women. maybe a few more, i don’t really remember. i wrote an article about the whole experience for monoki. it’s here, if you haven’t read it and want to.

in any event, i stopped going to nerve probably back in may. recently they upgraded everything, so i’ve sort of been checking it out here and there, the new features etc…

by far the funniest thing they’ve implemented is a new “quick reply” function. so instead of sending a response, you can just select a drop down and send a quick reply to someone. the replies are as follows:

Sorry, I’m too busy to respond to you right now.
Um, I don’t think our personalities match.
I respond only to profiles with photos.
Sorry - I think we’re looking for different things.
To be honest, I’m looking for someone younger.
To be honest, I’m looking for someone older.
You seem cool, but you’re not really my type.
Oops, bad timing - I just started a new relationship.
I’m not ready to get serious right now. Good luck.
Sorry, but I’m looking for a serious relationship.
You seem cool, but I’d prefer a local relationship.
Hey there - I’m not seeing new people right now.

now you’ll notice that all of these are negative, and just basically a series of different excuses for saying: “sod off”. i think it woudl be funny if there was a positive set as well. could be stuff like:

you sound perfect! let’s get married!
you’re hot. wanna fuck soon?
let’s talk more!
you’re not hot, and you sound like a douche, but i’ve got nothing else going on. wanna fuck soon?

i can’t think of any more. ideas?

oh, and i’m talking to a new girl on nerve. i think the over under before she stops replying or decides that she’s not interested is 7 days.

but when you google “manlio”, guess who pops up first?

thanks to mike for pointing this out. later we’ll ruminate on why mike is googling me.