P is for Pascal, Adam

I had all sorts of ideas for my P blog, including Personality, Pretending, Perfectionism, and Pictures, but then this morning I ended up in the horrible web of YouTube. Specifically, I was Adam Pascal hopping.

Damn, that boy can sing.

It really is tough to beat his voice. He makes most of the American Idol folks look like beginners, and he has extreme range and voice control. I guess he isn’t for everyone, but I can’t imagine why not.

I first learned of him last year, when E was working on RENT with the Crafton Hills College theater department. We had seen the movie first, and Adam Pascal plays the lead guy in that musical. The whole time I was watching it, I just couldn’t wait for him to sing again when it wasn’t his turn. He has a voice that speaks to me, and I figured he was probably the front man of some kick ass band somewhere, but he isn’t.

It’s just him.

So, why isn’t he more mainstream? I figure it’s probably because he actually has a truckload of talent. He doesn’t do much pop or mainstream style music, but I’m blown away that someone hasn’t made him more famous yet. I mean, the man can freaking sing. No joke style.

Here’s an example, if you don’t believe me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XiTD8rASXs

WOW, right? I’m not at all lying or kidding around when I say I do believe I’d give anything I have to sing like that. Or everything I have. With a voice like his, I could replace it all fairly quickly, I’m thinking. Even if I couldn’t, it would be SO worth it to grab a guitar and bust out with that song out of the blue around a campfire or something.

I’ve always wished I could sing well.

I’ve heard all his songs dozens of times. No, they aren’t all great or all hits, but a few of them really speak to me, like this performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMZgaOtJ0Cg&feature=related

SHEESH! Did you see how effortlessly he belts out notes that most can’t find in the sunshine with a flashlight? His singing voice is so far superior, in my opinion, that it isn’t even funny.

Yet I’ve never, ever found someone who has heard of him (other than the fine folks who performed in RENT).

I share his songs now and again on Facebook, but I never get a response, which I assume means folks aren’t liking him (or, probably closer to the truth, aren’t clicking on the link). I could listen to this guy all day and night, and in fact, I have. I’d pay big money to go to a performance. There are a lot of cell phone recordings of him at small venues on YouTube - oh, to catch one of those!

Here is one of his more popular songs, Heal Me I’m Heartsick:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8SglL6tDu0

Welp, I won’t go on and on about it, but let it be known that I think Adam Pascal’s voice is one of the best on the planet.

That is all. 

K is for Kill

Yet another wondrous word, kill can be used in quite a few ways. I intend to look at a few of them, but will surely forget one or two, as is par for the course.

Kill, as usually used, means to take a life. Any life will do, too: plants, animals, humans, fish... yes, I know fish are animals. But they have no legs and are slimy. At any rate, if you cause a living thing to die, you have killed it.

But you can also kill processes on, say, computers. Have you ever hit Control-Alt-Del and manually ended a process that was stuck or otherwise unwanted? You’ve killed that process, even though it didn’t die. So, another usage for kill could be end. In Linux, the command is actually kill if you want to end a process.

Another usage of the word might be waste. Have you ever killed time? Sure you have, and of course that doesn’t mean you found the source of all time and literally ended it, or I wouldn’t be writing this blog and you wouldn’t be pretending to read it. Killing time simply means you are wasting it, usually while waiting for another event, like an appointment or drugs.

I’m just killing time until my meth dealer arrives.

And, somehow, even though we aren’t supposed to laugh at funerals, the word kill is often associated with comedy. Dude, yer killin’ me, here!

Carrot Top kills it every time he’s on stage!

Omg, I was dying when he acted out that one part.

So, death is actually funny, we just won’t admit it.

It can also mean to finish quickly. I know, that’s freaking weird, but it’s true. Bro, you just killed that pitcher of Bud! Well, nobody would say he killed it if it took him all night to drink it, so we can infer that he consumed it at an accelerated pace.

In most movies, it means Let them live. 

Allow me to explain. Bad Guy 1 and Bad Guy 2 have Good Guys 1 and 2 tied up to chairs in a secret dungeon only three Russians and one random girl know about. Bad Guy 1 says to Bad Guy 2, “What should we do with these two?”

Bad guy 2 responds, “Keel dem.” He then turns and exits the dingy room, putting his designer black leather gloves back on while he walks.

Bad Guy 1 then smiles, looks at the good guys, and cuts them free so he can torture them at another location, all while revealing all their diabolical plans and allowing an inevitable escape en route. They never die, so the only thing that Keel dem can mean is Let them live.