Thursday, June 15, 2006

Blue Plate Special

You guys hear about Meat Loaf? (I never know if it's one word or two; I seem to have misplaced his embossed business card.) He sang "It's All Coming Back to Me Now"with KathElectra McBoobs on the American Idol finale, and looked like a human Swiffer, post-mop.

Apparently Monsieur Loaf suffers from horrible stage fright, and he also has some sort of heart ailment, which sucks and all, and he's not supposed to perform for more than a couple of hours at a stretch. Which, if you're Meat Loaf, gives you time for maybe a song and a half.

So the whole American Idol thing did not go well, between Meat Loaf's droopiness and McBoobs' idea of expressing "it's all coming back to me now" as two fingers occasionally pressed to the forehead. Meat Loaf says after the smoke and entrails were all cleaned up, he went backstage and blanked out and cried because the whole thing was so awful. I hear you, Loaf.

He should have checked with my grandma. Towards the end of her remarkable life, when she began insisting that various visiting grandchildren must eat butter pecan ice cream or she would go to hell, Grandma and Grandpa sat before the World Series or some such thing, and there to sing the National Anthem... Meat Loaf. My grandmother perked right up and joined in--every word-- and the world heard The Star Spangled Banner according to Florence and The Loaf.

Well, when you go about with a cow product as a first name, perhaps you should expect such an effect on the populace. Sail on, Sir Loaf.

we were barely seventeen and we were barely dressed at: mb@blondechampagne.com

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

When he came on stage I was pretty excited. That lasted all of about two words. I spent the remainder of the song (which normally would have given the Lord of the Rings Trilogy a run for its money, but was for some reason trimmed) feeling sorry for him. Ok, that's not true. I spent the time wondering if he was going to die on stage or wait and keel over backstage after the song. The real question for me is how anyone there kept a straight face. He was glowin' like the metal on the edge of a rusty nail.

Anonymous said...

Hee! I kept expecting him to hack the actual Meat Loaf up into that red hanky of his.

Anonymous said...

I attribute the awfulness to the fact that Meat Loaf (and yes, it is two words) shouldn't be singing Celine Dion's songs, just like he should never act unless it's or . A man's got to know his limitations.

I say this as a proud owner of both Bat Out Of Hell and its sequel, and a karaoke veteran of "Paradise By The Dashboard Light." I even sang the female part once when my best friend's date suffered from, evidently, the same stage fright as the man who made the song famous. The guy who ran the karaoke machine at that particular T.G.I. Friday's said it was the funniest damn thing he'd ever seen, and that we must have rehearsed it dozens of times. (We hadn't.)

Anonymous said...

Ugh. I don't know why that happened.

It's supposed to say "he should never act unless it's Eddie or Robert Paulson," and the links were to the IMDb pages for The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Fight Club.

Apologies for the ginormous block of linked text.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I found that whole performance very disturbing. Like the rest of you, I thought he was going to keel over and die.

But, to be fair, the same person that wrote many of Meat Loaf's songs also wrote that Celine Dion tune. Which, if it could wear clothes, would be dressed in layers of tulle and lace and frills.

Cbell said...

I didn't see that particular part of them program... but I was babysitting a set of 2nd grader triplets (products of a music minister, no less) who were appalled when "Prince" made his appearance to sing. The two boys and one girl, wanted to make sure that I knew he was "gross" and they couldn't wrap their minds around the fact that he had not been voted off the show before now.

Anonymous said...

cbell:

Yeah. The room filled was filled with the stifling scent of self-importance when he came on stage.

He showed up like a minute and a half before his performance, marched on stage, and left afterward without giving a moment to sully his pretty purple outfit by saying hello to the contestants.

The only version of "Raspberry Beret" I like is by Warren Zevon. The rest of Prince's music...yuck.

Nicko McDave said...

Lordy, I remember that game. It was right here in Pittsburgh at the since-demolished Three Rivers Stadium. What, I wondered, was Meat Loaf doing here? What connection did he have to Pittsburgh? They usually have local yokels sing the anthem.

But there he was. Meat Loaf. And I felt like my body had just entered the twilight zone.

gryphonesse said...

so I read the link about the heart condition - am I the only one who found this statement odd? "About 80 percent of people with symptoms first have them between the ages of 11 and 50."

Eleven and FIFTY. Kinda broad, there, dontchathink??

Anonymous said...

Yeah. And you know, after reading that whole thing, I'm... still not really sure what it IS.

Dantelope said...

75% of all statistics are made up.

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