The next singer guy performed Broken earlier as a duet with some girl and performed some stupid song that we think Brian Youdunno must be a big fan of… “Don’t Fall Away” or “In My Hands” or whatever it’s called. He relied on his affected voice too heavily, but so did the guy who originally sang it. Also his oooohs at the end were definitely out of key.

Karen gave him a brown two. I thought that was kind of harsh.
Angie gave him a six but switched to a four after Karen yelled “What!?!?!?”
Pete voted three for Three Doors Down who he imagines sings the song… Right or wrong.

“Hey Ya” came on for the sixth performer, but she claimed it wasn’t her song. While she waited for another song to cue up, she demanded that her mother take photos of her. That was so rock and roll. Angie gives her a one for not performing “Hey Ya.” She chose the song “The First Cut is the Deepest.” She did it fine with her smoker’s voice I guess. I too would have prefered “Hey Ya.”

Kar gives her a five she guesses.
Pete gives her a four but gives the stagemother a NINE!!!!!

This post is now sooo Matt Lyd-ian in length that it has expanded into a second post.

Why is everyone from Pittsburgh? Isn’t there anyone talented in East Stroudsburg or Wilkes Barre who could have made the trek?

The next performer had a vision of love and it was all that you’d given to her. She was pretty damn good. Too bad she didn’t do Johnny B. Goode or look like Kenny Rogers.

Karen gave her a 9 but thinks it would have been better if the mic wasn’t up so loud.
Angie gave her a ten because she wants to give a ten to someone.
Pete gave her a ten for having all the talent for American Idol but all the awkwardness of Karaoke.

My thumbs officially hurt.

The eighth performer did a song that I didn’t recognize, perhaps called “Take It Back.” Angie wonders if the tattoo on the upper back/lower neck is the new tramp stamp. This chick can sing but loses points because NO ONE has ever heard this song… Except maybe her mom. Stupid.

Kar thinks she was too young to do that song and gave her a four.
Angie gives her a three because she agrees with Kar that the song was boring but she liked the dramatic hugs the singer got after the performance.
Pete gave a five.

The mom just said, “WTF. I don’t know why the crowd didn’t respond. That was dynamite.”

The last contestant was actually from Philly and performed “Bring Me to Life” after warming up with a duet on that song by that other band that the chick who sings “Bring Me to Life” also sings on. Her voice is too weak to pull off this song. Which is too bad because I was pulling for her since she was sitting at the table next to us. (Weird. The guy who she dueted with earlier is singing the guy parts of this song along with her at his table. Angie suspects he loves her. She may be right, but apparently he can only communicate with her through song. It’s tragic really.)

Kar gives her an eight but that includes an extra point for being from Philly.
Angie gives her two points for having someone listen to her via cellphone. Two points for her secret lover sing along. Only one point for the song because it sucks. And two points for potentially being the only person from Philly for a total of Seven.
Pete gives her a nine because Uncle Bill came up from Florida to see her and Aunt Buppy was on the phone.

Woooooh. Stop the presses. A new performer has stormed the stage and demanded the opportunity to perform. He’s unscheduled. If he wins it will be an epic but controversial upset.

He’s performing “Walking in Memphis.”

Oh he sucks. Totally. Kenny Rogers is safe. How disappointing.

Walking in Memphis guy may have broken the mic. He’s so embarassingly bad yet completely earnest.

Kar gives him silence.
Angie gives him a four for chasing away the angry grannies.
Pete gives him a minus one in honor of Hulk 600. He showed no respect for competition by entering so late.

The judges chose four girls and two guys to move on to round 2.

But there’s controversy!!!!!

Only three women can move on to the next round. Joyce the chick with almost no pants on has been kicked out of the second round after being announced as a qualifier!

The crowd is stunned.

There’s utter silence.

OH MY GOD!

Walking in Memphis has now advanced in place of no-pants girl and the secret lover dude… Secret Lover dude is arguing with the judges.

This may be the most exciting moment in the history of the World Karaoke Championships.

I’m stunned.

My battery is about to die. We’re out of time folks!

Twelve finalists performed in the Karaoke World Championships Pennsylvania Finals Saturday night at Holy Smokes in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia. The top male and female performers would move on to the national championships in Ohio.

How the $&@# did we end up there? I dunno. Angie was hungry.

As the performers awaited the start of the competition, the atmosphere in the bar was electric. Many of the contestants were accompanied by their family and they were clearly ecstatic about the event.

After rehearsal performances of Boogie Woogie Ooogie Oogie, Broken, Alone and some Stevie Nicks piece of &$@#, the first contestant took the stage.

Apparently the one audience rule is do not boo, but no one is stopping me from booing them on my blog. Boooo.

The first contestant was from Pittsburgh and worked the crowd before launching into a Luther Vandross song. On his first falsetto “ooooh” his voice cracked. It was awesome. You should have been there. Five hours is a long way to drive just for your voice to crack. He also had a creepy way of singing without really opening his mouth. He should be a ventrillaquist, but his singing sounds way better now than it did at the beginning of the song. This song didn’t really have a catchy melody though… Note to self: when performing in the Karaoke World Championships perform a pop song.

Our scores:
Karen gave him a four out of ten. She thinks he picked a bad song.
Angie says six because he didn’t follow the words.
Pete gave him a five with no comments though he compared the singer’s championship potential to that of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

So we’ve heard five songs be performed (including the warm up tracks) and we know that the songs loop about ten seconds after they end and start over. Why doesn’t the guy running the machine know it yet? Dummy.

The second performer chose to go with Bobbie McGee complete with fake Janice Joplin accent. Not a bad impression, but it doesn’t show off her voice very well. I kind of forgot I like this song… But I’m still not sure it’s a good choice for the World Karaoke Championships. Her little hip dance move during the “awkwardly long for Karaoke” guitar solo was precious though.

Karen gives her a 5 or 6.
Angie gives her a 2 for doing a country song… She’s dumb…
Pete gives her a 6 as well because he realizes Janis Joplin is not a country artist and was very entertained.
Angie now knows it wasn’t a country song but stands by her score.

The third performer, also from Pittsburgh, appeared at the beginning to be wearing just a shirt with no bottoms on. It could have been awesome, but alas we discovered she is wearing short shorts they were just hidden. I didn’t recognize the song she did but she screamed way too much during it.

Karen gave her a three before she had even finished performing.
Angie gave her a 2 based on song choice.
Pete gave her a four, commenting simply, “wow.”

The fourth performer chose Johnny B. Goode, looked like Kenny Rogers, and danced like Elvis. Kar thought he might be doing his best Jagger crossed with the chicken dance. I declare him the winner though it doesn’t take much talent to sing that song.

Karen gives him a six because of the dancing but was unimpressed vocally.
Angie gives him an eight for his dance moves.
Pete told a mildly inappropriate joke that I would publish but he won’t let me.

Today saw the release of Incredible Hulk #600, another landmark issue in the year of Marvel‘s fuzzy math 70th Anniversary.  The dodgy addition is in full effect for this Hulk issue as well since I can’t make heads or tails of how this is issue 600.

According to my research (Wikipedia), Hulk was featured in Tales to Astonish from issue 60 through 101.  At this point, the series was renamed Incredible Hulk and ran to issue 474.  The title was relaunched (as were a number of Marvel books at the time) with a new #1 and ran through issue 112.  This is where (and Kevin loved this) the title became Incredible Hercules.

The final days of the Incredible Hulk title saw the Hulk’s journey to an alien world in Planet Hulk when the Illuminati decided to protect the Earth by sending the Hulk away, and his eventual return for vengeance in World War Hulk.  Despite the success of these stories by writer Greg Pak, Marvel mysteriously handed the Hulk over to Jeph Loeb for a new series with a another issue #1, that was and is God awful.  This book reached issue #12 last month and has focused entirely on another mystery in the identity of a new Red Hulk (called Rulk, see, God awful).

Adding it up we have 101 issues of Tales to Astonish, 373 issues of Incredible Hulk (102-474) volume 1, 112 issues of Incredible Hulk volume 2, and 12 issues of God awful Hulk.

101 + 373 + 112 + 12 = 598

So, they’re off by 1!  No, they aren’t because you have to include Incredible Hulk -1 from Marvel’s Minus One Month in 1997.  599..therefore, this is issue 600.

Not really, there are still two problems:

1.  The original 1962 Hulk series by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby ran from issue 1 to 6.  Wouldn’t that make this issue 606?

2.  Hulk wasn’t featured in Tales to Astonish 1-59.  Wouldn’t that make this issue 541? or 547?

Happy Anniversary Hulk!

Almost forgot the issue review, we’re still not told the identity of Red Hulk, we get a reprint of Hulk: Gray #1, two fun Chris Giarusso stories (featuring Green, Red and Blue Hulks), and an intriguing She-Hulk story featuring someone who’s not any She-Hulk I’m familiar with and is apparently Bruce Banner’s daughter from the future.  I did not feel this was worth the $4.99 price tag and I’m not even sure it’s issue 600.

As of this paragraph, this post is now titled “What to Think of the Upcoming Incredible Hulk 601.”  It is a conversation Kevin and I had months ago when we learned:
Incredible Hulk was returning with issue 600 followed by future issues written by Greg Pak, Jeph Loeb’s God awful Hulk book would continue with issue 13, Skaar Son of Hulk would continue without Skaar, and Incredible Hercules would not be affected in any way.

Kevin: I don’t even know what to make of this.  Or if I even want to read it, what I need to do to catch up.  What a nightmare.

Pete: I think you can ignore Herc, obviously.  I can lend you all of the remaining Skaar issues leading up to 600.  I’m stopping that book at issue 12.  I think we can ignore Loeb’s Hulk.  The only real story is “who is the Red Hulk?” so, I think at that point you could start with Hulk 600 and go on from there.

I’ll be getting at least issue 600 (since it fills in between WWH and Loeb’s Hulk #1) and 601 (just to see what Pak has planned).  I will not be getting any of Loeb’s Hulk issues.  It is a nightmare, but I trust Pak.  I know you didn’t dig Planet Hulk so much, but I really enjoyed his run and World War Hulk for the most part.  Easily, the best since the Peter David stuff.

Kevin: Yeah I really liked World War Hulk.  Planet Hulk not so much.

Pete: I think Pak back on Incredible Hulk is absolutely worth checking out.  I have my doubts that Loeb and Pak had all of this worked out at the beginning though.  I just feel like Pak would have reacted differently when we asked him about the transition and encouraged us to keep reading.

Kevin: Yeah that’s what I thought when I read that comment yesterday.  When we saw him at NYCC he had no future Hulk plans in place.

Pete:  This post is now 700 words.

My latest distraction has been caused by My Latest Distraction and other blogs as well.  All you bloggers out there will understand where I am coming from.  I know for me, blogging isn’t just about typing for the sake of typing.  I thought it was a great way to share my opinion on things and start a conversation.  A blog is a great way to start that conversation since it has a section for comments.  If I didn’t want to hear people’s thoughts on the topic, I would just make a website.

To alert people to our lovely page, we have it set up to broadcast to other areas on the web.  One in particularly, I find extremely frustrating….Facebook.  It is great, don’t get me wrong.  I love that people come and read what we have to say based on a link posted in a status update.  But if you have something to say about what was written here…share it with all the MLD readers.  Don’t just comment on the Facebook update, or the Tweet, or whatever various method you used to find us.

Comment here on MLD.  Let us know we are loved and appreciated.  I think most bloggers out there would agree….we thrive on comments  🙂

Thanks.

I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but, I think I liked some of the new Dave Matthews Band music. Heard clips from their new album, Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King, on Sound Opinions on NPR, and thought, wow, is this really the Dave Matthews Band? It actually ROCKED. As soon as I felt that, I had questions. What could be further from punk rock, and the other styles of music I love so, than the Dave Matthews Band? I’ve said it in my home blog that I dislike Dave Matthews Band, and I want to keep that record unbroken, but here I am, wondering if I’ve been wrong this whole time.

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