The Accidental Heckler

As of late I have been blessed by the friendship of some folks whose cool factor far outranks my own. While I am a social person, parties and clubs have never been my forte (I don’t have the bone structure), thus I am tragically unaware of the mores of that scene. Despite this fact, I found myself late last night at The Someday Lounge http://www.somedaylounge.com/, one of Portland's artiest nightspots and the venue for my newest performance endeavor Muscle Max an 80's retelling of the 19th century opera The Elixir of Love http://www.operatheateroregon.com/. It was a magical night, It was open mic. Night! I was talking some opera jargon with fellow opera whores Katie and Tyler when suddenly the generally laid back place was filled with the really awful sounds of bad, “I wish I were a Beastie Boy” white-boy rap. Not only was this bad white-boy rap but it was exceedingly loud white-boy rap (I should also mention that the "rappers" most resembled Jay and Silent Bob only less attractive.) After the completion of the first number the head "rapper" announced: "it sounds pretty good up here, how bout from out there?" I, having performed with mics and monitors that are not properly set up for a particular acoustic, tried to be helpful by announcing the following: "it's a bit loud." I really meant it in the kindest way, unfortunately, homey white-boy thought that I was heckling him (not the case however well deserved it may have been.) Senior homey pants then set about informing me that he "was from Baltimore" and then proceeded to grumble some sort of East Coast taunt and much to my chagrin, the crowd seemed to disagree with my point that the music might have been the teensiest bit too loud. Thankfully I was cool by association (us opera whores are sponsored by the Someday) and no harm was done. Whitey Mc Whiterson continued to serenade us with his “Baltimore” rap. A good time had by all and really I think we all learned something that night; ugly rap guy learned that you shouldn’t ask questions that you really don’t want the answer to, I learned that I don’t ever want to go to Baltimore (yikes, at least not if everybody there acts like that.)