Shocking!

December 19, 2007

Two entries in the same week. Wow.

I’m in the mood for random anecdotes, which means that I hope you are also in the mood for random anecdotes.

On the day of wild, horizontal rain in Hawaii, the company throwing the trip decided they needed to schedule some rainy-day activities. But for adults. And Karaoke Night was born. My love for karaoke is well-known (especially amongst those poor souls who’ve had to listen to me sing karaoke) and I had to drag Devin to Karaoke Night at the hotel. Early, so I could get a good spot close to the stage.

I opened Karaoke Night with “I Want You To Want Me” and was given mad applause if only because I was the foolish, but courageous, person who was willing to be the first Karaoke Night victim. (After my fourth song of the night, the drunken crowd learned that there was nothing courageous about my choice to be first–it was all about being a Karaoke Whore.) Suffice it to say, the night was all sorts of fun.

Besides myself, there were three other girls who also sang multiple songs, but their songs were Sarah McLachlan songs or country songs and mine were “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend,” and “These Boots Are Made For Walking.” After “Diamonds” the Karaoke Maestro asked me if I knew what movie that song was from and I shouted “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes!” into the mike and got a smattering of applause from the old-timers who think that all twenty-somethings are clueless about movies made before they were born. A belief that was proven somewhat valid when some twenty-something tried to correct me with, “No! It’s from Moulin Rouge.” Which was just sad.

When I wasn’t singing, I was dancing because I love dancing as much as I love singing (and am inarguably a better dancer than I am a singer). Since Karaoke Night had two open bars, the need for me to sing to fill the time was lessened as the night went on and the people got progressively more drunk. I also love drunk karaoke because it’s so damned funny. It always reminds me of going to a local karaoke bar one night with a bunch of friends, during the holiday season, and watching a stumbling, slurring drunkard fuck up ALL of the words to “Frosty The Snowman.” You have no idea how much joy I still derive from that memory.

So, being pushed aside for drunkard karaoke only made the night that much better, as far as I was concerned. Even though I had to listen to a slew of country songs, which lead to me starting the line-dancing to a drunken rendition of “Boot-Scooting Boogie” because yes, I know how to line dance. And square-dance, for that matter. I’ve got more country in me than you think. I was line-dancing by myself for a while before some other drunk girls came stumbling up, “I don’t really know how to do this but you make it look so much fun!!” And it was so much fun.

Since line-dancing eventually became a success by the end of the song, Karaoke Maestro decided to play the Electric Slide and oh, my lord, I had no idea how many women hold the Electric Slide near and dear to their hearts. There was a stampede to the dance floor and, since I didn’t know the Electric Slide, I stuck to the back of the three lines of Electric Sliding women. The girls that I taught how to Boot-Scoot took it upon themselves to teach me how to Slide, and they kept laughing because I (unintentionally) put a country-western flair on the Electric Slide and was basically doing a modified Boot-Scoot. Which wasn’t a surprise to me because I line-danced for years. I had the tight jeans and the cowboy boots and everything… and I was good. I’m an abysmal ballerina but I kick country-western dancing ass. Even though I gave up the competitive square dancing (yes, that does read competitive square dancing) upon entering high school because I just liked to dance and had no aspirations to raise sheep and pigs, and being a 4-H member was an unspoken requirement of being a square-dancer.

Back to the random anecdote at hand, though. So, when I wasn’t singing karaoke, I was dancing along to someone else’s not-too-bad karaoke and generally having a hell of a good time. Another of my favorite moments was when a group of parents conspired to get their little kids to go up and sing a few songs. The eldest child was 9 and the youngest was a toddler–three girls, two boys and all cute as hell. Their names are called and their parents cheer them on as they take the stage, which prompted the rest of us to cheer them on because they were obviously mortified. We were all expecting some cutesy song–maybe even a Christmas carol.

And instead we heard the opening to Poison’s “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn.” I seriously fell off my chair because I was laughing so hard. Devin looked at me sprawled out on the floor, “Isn’t this the Rock of Love song?!”

“It IS! It’s the Rock of Love song! OHMIGOD. Someone needs to videotape this and send it to Bret Michaels. He would LOVE it.”

Those kids singing “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn” is now one of my most treasured karaoke memories, right up there with the drunken guy who ruined “Frosty the Snowman.” Even though Devin kept kicking me because I was laughing so hard, which I realized could easily be taken the wrong way (even though the children’s parents were laughing much louder than I was) and I managed to turn my laughter into cheers. Hell. I’m laughing right now just thinking about it. Because I learned from “Rock Of Love” that Bret wrote that song about a stripper who had broken his heart and I couldn’t get that out of my mind while those kids were singing, which sent me into further convulsions of laughter. It was wonderful.

THEN some guy sang “Friends in Low Places,” which reminded me of the first time I heard that song. I was in the third grade and some sixth-grade boys sang it for the elementary school talent show and, of course, that memory sent me back to the land of inappropriate raucous laughter. But the guy singing didn’t give a damn and actually encouraged the audience to laugh, cheer, boo, sing along, dance… basically do anything they wanted while he sang and drank his beer. So, of course, it turned into a “Friends in Low Places” sing-along that ROCKED.

But once the open bar shut down at 10 pm, the party was over. We all trudged back to our rooms to sleep off the wild karaoke night and to write down treasured memories into our journals.

The next morning I woke up early, hangover-free (Devin and I had agreed on a two-drinks per night for me and I faithfully stuck to that rule) and headed down to the fabulous buffet breakfast that was put out for us every morning. Since kicking most of the drugs, I’ve gone back to not sleeping much at all, so I was always waking up before Devin and heading down to breakfast insanely early.

I enjoyed picking at my food, drinking vats of tea (all of the wait staff knew me and kept bringing me huge carafes of hot water so I wouldn’t have to keep going back to the beverage station every time I wanted another cup of tea) and either reading a book, or just watching the ocean.

While I was drinking tea and watching the ocean, a man from a near-by table asked if I was the girl who sang “These Boots Are Made For Walking” last night.

“Yup. That was me. So, you were there last night? Wasn’t it fun?”

“No, we weren’t there,” the man replies while gesturing towards his wife.

L o n g p a u s e. “Then how did you….” I didn’t complete the question because I was beginning to realize that I would probably not like the answer.

“We saw you on the TV.” I really hate it when people say “the TV,” and so it took me a moment to fully process his statement.

“WHAT?! I was on TELEVISION? SINGING?!“

“And dancing. They showed more of you dancing, actually.”

Not many things leave me speechless but this lovely revelation managed to do just that. At this point, I think the wife could tell that I was freaking out a bit, so she jumped in to explain. And I really wish she hadn’t because it only made things worse.

“You know Channel 2 on the TV? The one that is only for the hotel and stuff? They’ve been running video from last night all morning long on that channel. You’re in it a lot.”

“Please tell me that you are kidding.” Or that this is really just a nightmare and I’m still asleep in my hotel room.

“Oh, no, they’re not kidding. I saw it too! You were really good!” Says a perky blonde woman from the table next to mine.

“Oh. Dear. Lord. Well… thank you for the compliments. I need to go get more tea.”

Of course I didn’t need more tea and fleeing in-doors turned out to be a bad idea because most everyone had seen the video footage and I was recognized quite a few more times. By the time Devin showed up, I was absolutely mortified and told him that, apparently, I had become some sort of star on closed-circuit hotel TV and Devin laughed… and laughed… and laughed. He might’ve said something about how I deserved what I got for being a dancing, karaoke fool.

As soon as he was done with his breakfast, I dragged him back to the hotel room and… sure enough, there I was on Channel 2. Along with the “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn” Poison kids, a girl who absolutely killed “Black Velvet,” and a whole lot of drunks singing country music. Along with the dancing. Me and my lonely Boot-Scooting and oh yeah, there I am in the mass of girls doing the Electric Slide.

Once I got over the mortification and was able to laugh at myself (didn’t take very long), Devin and I got our swimsuits on and headed down to spend the entire day on the beach, in anticipation of the big Beach Party in the evening. Which meant that, for the rest of the day, random people would come up to me and tell me that they had seen me on TV.

Thankfully, footage of drunken dancing at the Beach Party that night replaced the karaoke video the next day and, since I knew now to stay away from random men with video cameras, my fifteen-minutes were over.

But it didn’t stop me from making an even bigger fool out of myself when they brought back Karaoke Night By Popular Demand! Karaoke Night #2 started much earlier than the first night and I seriously sang four or five songs in the first hour-and-a-half because there was practically no one there. And the few people who were there had absolutely no sense of humor because I managed to clear the room with my rendition of “Because I Got High.” Which was damned hilarious, although Karaoke Maestro was a bit pissed that I’d scared away the few people who had also shown up early. Until I reminded him that they were only there for the free liquor, anyway, and that it wasn’t my fault that they had no sense of humor. Since my version of “Because I Got High” (which is a song I actually have on my karaoke machine at home and I do a damn good version of it because I sing it like I’m completely stoned, which is how it’s meant to be sung) had the wait staff screaming with laughter. A few of the male waiters came up to me afterwards and said that, “When the stong started, we thought the Karaoke Guy had made a mistake because no way was this sweet, pretty girl going to sing that song… and then you sang that song! It was AWESOME.”

And it was.

Posted in My So-Called Life