TRANSVESTITE BINGO/THE CELESTIAL MATINEE/LIA FAIL

TRANSVESTITE BINGO/THE CELESTIAL MATINEE/LIA FAIL

Larry the Cable Guy, barely escaping the transvestite bingo hall.

Met up with a fellow blogger visiting LA on business last Wednesday. First stop was gay bingo at Hamburger Mary's.

Things got off to a rollicking start when my friend pulled a chair out from a table where 3 gay doods were sitting. She was bringing the chair to another table but I thought she was just showing me where to sit. So I introduced myself to 3 gay guys who my friend didn't even know and they were like: "Thure, you can thit here!"

Now, I had a fun time, but gay bingo humor (not gringo humor, but close) can really grate after a while. Gay bingo humor, to me, has three categories:

1. Relentless Double Entrendes. You can see these jokes a mile away, they're so easy and after 3 or 4 in a row they seem painfully obligatory.

2. Dennis Miller-level Gay Culture References. One of the big prizes for winning bingo was free tickets to a Melissa Manchester show somewhere in LA. Now, even the predominantly gay audience seemed underwhelmed. Eveyone at my table was like "Who?" That's when the host dropped another reference to someone I'd never heard of. See, I don't need Larry the Cable Guy LCD humor (even if the premise behind Delta Farce is pretty funny), but I don't need a string of LGBTQ in-jokes either.

3. Sassy Quips/Diva-hand Fashion Critiques. I don't mind a quality sassy quip here and there, but fashion-related humor always hits my ear in Joan Rivers's voice and always seems a little shallow. Someone could point out that I often rip the crowd at the shows I see....but I hope I can convince you that that has more to do with my wish that fashion played as small a role as possible in music.

No, this is not a scene from Brazil.

Now, I don't know how many of my dawgs may be going through this, but I am really starting to appreciate bull dykes. I kept looking around Hamburger Mary's and thinking to myself: OK, so the doods here are obviously gay, but all the women are straight, right? Its frustrating to look around and see a lot of hot, feminine women who could give a shit about dicks. I mean, I expect mature, intelligent good-looking women not to give a shit about me, but not dicks in general. At least bull dykes I can count out immediately.

Anyway, we rolled out to the Saddle Ranch at Universal Citywalk to check out a friend-of-a-friend's band called Lia Fail. I was hesitant at first considering parking is a $10 bitch, but Lia Fail was described to me as something like an all-girl cookie monster band so I was intrigued. Actually the people with me referenced a bunch of metal bands I don't listen to, so I really didn't know what to expect.

First band we caught was:

THE CELESTIAL MATINEE: Despite the dorky basslines, bad poetry bandname and the Macy's catalogue wardrobe, I was actually enjoying their set. The vocals weren't too annoying and they weren't acting like assholes. Then I checked out their MySpace and realized that they're a shite version of Incubus. Which is difficult to imagine.

Headlining was:

LIA FAIL: who are a pretty tight if unenergetic all-girl metal band. I was digging on three or four of the riffs, but overall, I couldn't get into any of the tunes. Some cuties on git and bass were distracting, sure, but not enough to distract from all the unimaginative man-hatin' metal. A lot of dorky banshee screaming, too. Sounded to me like the girls listen to Kittie when they should be listening to Crass.

They have a song called "Testicles" on their MySpace which is the perfect example of a songtitle ruined by a song.