god's got a sick sense of humor.
Picks the weekend I go out both Friday and Saturday night for the boss to call me into work on Sunday morning to do the weekend shift.
I had eaten this morning, and was kind of getting ready for that mid-day nap. My head was nodding off, and I heard an odd vibration, so I ignored it. Then, my home phone went off, with my boss' cell phone number all over it -- and I shrugged, like "of course." Tina called in sick, so I dealt with an extra day of writing and general stress just because I needed the cash (everyone decided to get into car crashes today on the roads, I guess.) It could have been worse. Joe called me in between shows and said he was planning to call in sick, and I told him I was already subbing. He relented, and is likely hacking through writing a show right now.
All this after a long weekend of boozing and bar-hopping on Friday, and a Saturday night complete with homemade pizza (courtesy of pfhranzilicious) and karaoke. Doc's Karaoke Bar is a cheesy, kinda dingy place where a lot of the clientele is big into the soft rock oldies and country hits for the stuff, and we went in with the intention of rocking the disco, old school soul, and 80s stuff. Bizarre things happen at this karaoke bar, like, say, running into a friend of Frank and Mary Ann's after she had gone and visually reinvented herself (no glasses, curly dirty blonde hair gone straight and bleached, contact lenses.) The only way you could recognize her if you knew her was if you saw the giant tattoo on her back, which makes me wonder why you would get a tattoo all over your back in the first place. It doesn't match with every piece of clothing you own.
Gina and her friend Chris left before their songs came up, so it was: Meghan, Franz, Jason, Labri, Alex, L.C., and myself. Song choices were:
Franz: Prince, "Little Red Corvette"
Meghan and Labri: "I Will Survive"
Jason: gee, I can't recall. Did he even do a song on his own?
Alex: Huey Lewis and the News, "Hip to be Square"
L.C. Madonna, "Like a Prayer"
yours truly: Stevie Wonder, "Superstition"
There is no song that seems to draw more of the women to the front of the dance floor than "Like a Prayer." There is something about the magnetism of Madonna in her pop prime that drives people to her, even those of us who should be ashamed at knowing certain songs in her catalog back to front.
Here are my tips for making it work at karaoke:
1) Sell it. The whole point is showmanship. Dance, work the mic. It obscures tone-deafness, if you are of that ilk.
2) I prefer not to do ballads. Some people do them a lot, they're easier. You're drinking, keep it up tempo.
3) If you can work it vocally, go with soul/R&B tunes. Wilson Pickett or Otis Redding are not good choices for the tone deaf.
4) If not, going 80s new wave or pop is a good fall back, as is old-school honky-tonk. There is nothing more fun than knocking back beers and butchering Hank Williams, Sr.
5) Doing hip-hop songs at karaoke feels kind of like a cop-out.
Got any of your own?
I had eaten this morning, and was kind of getting ready for that mid-day nap. My head was nodding off, and I heard an odd vibration, so I ignored it. Then, my home phone went off, with my boss' cell phone number all over it -- and I shrugged, like "of course." Tina called in sick, so I dealt with an extra day of writing and general stress just because I needed the cash (everyone decided to get into car crashes today on the roads, I guess.) It could have been worse. Joe called me in between shows and said he was planning to call in sick, and I told him I was already subbing. He relented, and is likely hacking through writing a show right now.
All this after a long weekend of boozing and bar-hopping on Friday, and a Saturday night complete with homemade pizza (courtesy of pfhranzilicious) and karaoke. Doc's Karaoke Bar is a cheesy, kinda dingy place where a lot of the clientele is big into the soft rock oldies and country hits for the stuff, and we went in with the intention of rocking the disco, old school soul, and 80s stuff. Bizarre things happen at this karaoke bar, like, say, running into a friend of Frank and Mary Ann's after she had gone and visually reinvented herself (no glasses, curly dirty blonde hair gone straight and bleached, contact lenses.) The only way you could recognize her if you knew her was if you saw the giant tattoo on her back, which makes me wonder why you would get a tattoo all over your back in the first place. It doesn't match with every piece of clothing you own.
Gina and her friend Chris left before their songs came up, so it was: Meghan, Franz, Jason, Labri, Alex, L.C., and myself. Song choices were:
Franz: Prince, "Little Red Corvette"
Meghan and Labri: "I Will Survive"
Jason: gee, I can't recall. Did he even do a song on his own?
Alex: Huey Lewis and the News, "Hip to be Square"
L.C. Madonna, "Like a Prayer"
yours truly: Stevie Wonder, "Superstition"
There is no song that seems to draw more of the women to the front of the dance floor than "Like a Prayer." There is something about the magnetism of Madonna in her pop prime that drives people to her, even those of us who should be ashamed at knowing certain songs in her catalog back to front.
Here are my tips for making it work at karaoke:
1) Sell it. The whole point is showmanship. Dance, work the mic. It obscures tone-deafness, if you are of that ilk.
2) I prefer not to do ballads. Some people do them a lot, they're easier. You're drinking, keep it up tempo.
3) If you can work it vocally, go with soul/R&B tunes. Wilson Pickett or Otis Redding are not good choices for the tone deaf.
4) If not, going 80s new wave or pop is a good fall back, as is old-school honky-tonk. There is nothing more fun than knocking back beers and butchering Hank Williams, Sr.
5) Doing hip-hop songs at karaoke feels kind of like a cop-out.
Got any of your own?