[UPDATE #2: Go here for Dave's much, much more in-depth take on these events.]

[UPDATE: It's "Curt" (or possibly "Kurt"). Apologies to all Bills for defaming your name, and to Mr. as Intuition for forgetting yours, even though you're still a train wreck of a performer.]

For the second time this semester tonight, I went to The Ark to see my buddy Dave on open mike night. From my two Ark open mike experiences, I think I can safely extrapolate that you can expect the following:

1. Numerous singer-songwriter types of various stripes from just starting out to touring regional artist, all with some modicum of talent.
2. At least one fairly butch lesbian who sings little girl voice singer-songwriter love songs devoid of third-person singular pronouns.
3. One act from Neptune.

The first time we went, the act from Neptune was an older, vaguely-Willie-Nelson-looking gentleman who only sang one song, but did it in this wacky soprano/falsetto style. The verses were these ridiculous little stories about living in different places ("I used to live, in a one-bedroom apartment...", "I used to live, on the streets of Chicago") and then having them busted up by the cops or some other outside agency. The chorus was simply, "IIIIII'mmmm, just a little bit lonely." We were kind of chuckling through the song, but actually loving it.

I forget tonight's Neptune guy's first name, but it was followed by "as Intuition". Let's call him "Bill as Intuition" for the sake of discussion. The first bad sign (beyond the name) was that when Bill as Intuition approached the stage, he was carrying an iPod which was to be his accompaniment. (Everyone else used between one and three of: piano, guitar, harmonica.) The sound people were not sure how to deal with this at first, so they interposed the set of gender-neutral shaved-head-girl love songs, during which they talked over the iPod setup. They got it ready for Bill as Intuition to go next.

I can only describe Bill as Intuition's singing style as, "if Neil Dimaond and Jon Secada had a kid, except untalented and full of himself." OK, the full of himself wasn't just singing style, but also the fact that he kept bitching about the volume of the music (too low), and he had that slicked-straight-back hair style that only works for network news anchors and Mafioso. It just makes everybody else look like an annoying greasy guy, and frankly doesn't even work all that well for the anchors and mob. The songs were your standard issue cheesy pop ballads with backing that would generously be described as electronica, and ungenerously described as more over-produced than E.T. the Atari game. Also, the lyrics of the second song mostly consisted of "SLEEPWALKER!" repeated approximately 4,406 times.

At the end of his set, Bill as Intuition bitched about the volume of the backing music one more time, and then mentioned that he has made a video of the second song. If we can find this anywhere, trust me we will share--it promises to be comedy gold, if not comedy platinum.