That One Time I Got Drunk (PARTY NEXT FRIDAY!)

After repeated electronic hassling, Goldie the eternally generous was foolish kind enough to give me a set of keys to CIMTB. I promised to blog about "that one time I got really drunk" and "awesome stuff I find on CD Baby". That's an awful lot to cover, so for this, my first post, I will focus exclusively on "that one time I got drunk."

In fact, the most recent time I got drunk was just last night. It was really fun. I got so drunk because I drank so many beers (seriously, a lot of beers.)

What made this time really drunk special and famous was that I did the drunk at the Kiknbaque Lounge (MLK and Fremont), which is, in addition to being the closest bar to my house, the awesomest bar in the universe (they post their incident logs on their MySpace blog. Read them. They're funnier than a vanful of horny rat dogs).


Wednesdays and Thursdays at the Kiknbaque, my main man Curtis hosts Karaoke. It's wild. Best Karaoke night in town. Curtis tears the shit out of "Sherry Baby". Dude is probably 300 pounds and has the falsetto of an 11 year old boy. It's unreal.

Turns out they're having some trouble though. As my buddy Jason Simms described in his Oregonian piece last month, the police and the OLCC have been giving them a lot of grief about "rowdy" patrons and frequent fights. Fewer and fewer people have been coming in as the staff struggles to conform to the stricter and stricter regime of early closing and noise control. Dale Acelar, the manager, told me that the Karaoke night was enough to keep them going for a while, but that they are looking down the barrel of closure right now.

Incidentally, we had a really really good time. The Kiknbaque Lounge might not be the hippest place in town. They don't have flashy adds in the Mercury, and you're not likely to spot any local celebs bellying up to the modest bar. But it's honest, and it's real, and it's the closest bar to my house goddamn it. It needs to be saved.

The upshot is this: 20 kids singing badly and drinking all night helped, but won't really do much in the long run, or even in the near term to keep them from going under. So we're having a party!

Next Friday, August 22nd, come down to the Kiknbaque Lounge for a totally banging night of sweet soul music and to be determined drink specials. DJs Jimbo and Scott will be spinning silky smooth soul sounds all night long, and you won't have to wait 2 hours for a drink like at some other soul nights. 9pm til the booze runs dry!

PS: I promise to actually blog about music really soon!