We like to sing: a photo essay.

Apparently there is now only one acceptable birthday activity and that is singing karaoke.

If there is a person who needs to be in a band it is my sister Em:

She almost threw down with the dudes who managed to squeak in with Queen's "Somebody to Love" just before her name came up with the same song. The dudes weren't bad, though. While they were singing, the Brit and I simultaneously had the righteous feeling that we should be listening to Queen on our entire ride to Montana next month.

BIL did a prayerful rendition of "Creep." He really likes songs that have a bit of falsetto action.

During most of this performance, the Brit cavorted around the front of the stage, pretending to weep soulfully.

The Brit broke on through to the other side:

This awakened the interest of every wanky 19 year old boy for miles, especially the ones who were in the bar with fake IDs.

The birthday girl got a little bit serious with "Crazy for You." She did this same thing on her 30th birthday, which is when we discovered this place, if you can really "discover" a place to which hundreds of 21 year olds swarm at 11:30 PM, in order to "rap" their favorite Snoop Dogg joints. I can't think of anything less entertaining than a bunch of suburban adolescents badly rapping, giggling, and grinding on a karaoke stage, but there we were.


Bill got the posey hand when he sang:

The Brit later suggested that he sounded a little bit like Tay Zonday singing "Rock With You," which maybe isn't accurate but is pretty damn funny. He in fact nailed all of the high stuff, and when I told him so he said "Really? it hurt like hell" through hysterical laughter. (The morning after Lord and Lady Cupcake's wedding a few years back, those of us who went and sang at the karaoke reception enjoyed saying things like "dude, my nodes are really killing me today. I think I jacked up my node last night." This is maybe only funny to professional singers.)

Anyway, too late Bill and I both realized that we should be singing disco. I don't know why I've never sung Thelma Houston's version of "Don't Leave Me This Way" (though I have done "I Will Survive," because it's unavoidable, especially if you like to help other people who want to sing but don't want to stand up there alone). Next time, suckers. This time it was standbys Queen and Wham which apparently made me do this:


Trala, trala.

When your man wanna get buck wild.

Last night I experienced some futuristic karaoke. Have you seen this, where there are a few touch screens instead of a pile of grimy binders? Or if you know what you want to sing already, you just write it down and voila, the dude has it? (Aside: I was going to send you to the dude's website, but it's one of the worst websites I've ever seen.) Well, it's magical. I did "Kiss on My List" by Hall and Oates (with a hat tip to Melinda for the suggestion) and "Hit Em Up Style" by Blu Cantrell and I had "Wuthering Heights" in the queue but it was after midnight and the place was packed with fratty-bo-blattys and we had to go. Also "Wuthering Heights" probably would have been a huge drag for most of the audience, even though I would have been in hysterics the whole time and both of my sisters promised to do interpretive dance.

Also, my brother in law sang "Take On Me," which was awesome. And my boyfriend did a sweet Mick Jagger impersonation, with stomping and everything. And I have jillions of bad phone videos of the event. We'll see whether any are fit for mass consumption. My guess is no.

In other news, I have just achieved positive net worth, which I'm pretty excited about.

Sing out loud, sing out strong.

Oh man. I just whipped up some Chipotle Mac and Cheese and I am having such a passionate affair with my dinner plate right now. It's a good thing I only make this stuff every two months.

The BFS's birthday was yesterday and some of us convened to celebrate, but we will also be convening on Tuesday night to do karaoke in honor of her birth. The rule for that night, apparently, is that you can only sing a song you've never karaoked before, and I'm baffled. At one point I was keeping a little word file of things I might/should sing at karaoke and very recently I deleted it because I thought "you are an idiot for having this." But now I wish I hadn't.

So what should I sing, internets? I'll tell you what's off-limits, based on my past karaoke stints:
Patsy Cline: "Crazy"
Justin T-lake: "Cry Me a River"
The Cardigans: "Lovefool"
Gloria Gaynor: "I Will Survive"
Queen: "Another One Bites the Dust"
Young MC: "Bust a Move"
B-52s: "Love Shack"
Wham: "Everything She Wants"
Cheap Trick: "I Want You to Want Me"
Deee-lite: "Groove is in the Heart"
Atlantic Starr: "Always" (obviously)
Hall & Oates: "Sara Smile," "I Can't Go for That" (oooh, I can sing a LOT more Hall & Oates)
Most of Madonna's catalogue
And others I'm forgetting.

I tell you, what I really want to sing is "Cool it Now" by New Edition, but I'm not sure I'm going to find that on any karaoke list. This particular DJ is really good, though, so maybe he'll have my back. I'll keep you posted.

Would you stand back baby cause I wanna get a better look.

No alarms went off this morning, and I had a leisurely dream in which I was singing Bonnie Raitt at a friend's karaoke party, some obscure song that I magically knew all the words to, and I was lounging on the furniture and singing it all perfectly, no effort, no crazy opera vibrato (dudes, you have no idea how hard it is to control), just languid lovely country-blues sound. I can't tell you how good it felt, how I actually thought in the dream "this is exactly how singing with a mic is supposed to go." Did I tell you about the famous opera singer who did "Jolene" at the latest karaoke wedding reception I attended? It sounded exactly the way you would imagine it sounding, like when you make fun of opera singers (which my sister Mol very much enjoys doing). Fortunately, the famous opera singer's children broke my heart a few minutes later by singing "Country Road, Take Me Home" in the purest little trebles. Seriously, I cried (you are not surprised, I know).

I didn't really need an alarm this morning, since I don't work on Tuesdays. It was nice to sleep all the way until 9, to get up when the sun is already evident. We're having sparkly, brilliant, butt-ass-cold weather right now. It looks much better than it feels, all razor-sharp sunlit edges against the blue sky and razor-sharp winds in your tender grill. I ate steel-cut oats for breakfast and read your blogs and then I went to the gym and brutalized my legs on the track for awhile and lifted some weights. I had a very zen run on Sunday, a very in-the-moment, not counting the laps kind of run, and I was interested in replicating it. Sadly, I think these zen runs will be few and far between. In fact, I had to resort to my old motivational standbys, "Go Go Gadget Gospel" and "Get Me Bodied" for the second mile. That's right, I'm talking about two miles here. However, I must point out that I just looked at a bunch of posts from this time last year, and while I was listening to the same music, at that point I was lucky to run 3 consecutive quarters of a mile.

Another thing I realized from looking at old posts is that I used to be a much more interesting writer, possibly because I had fewer claims on my time.

I'm cooking chickpeas tonight. Are you like me, always having the best of intentions about soaking and preparing dried beans instead of opening a can? I open so many cans. The convenience is key, but as Deee-lite said in like 1991, "convenience is the enemy." So true! They were speaking of the environment, of course.

Anyway, I always have an assortment of dried beans in the cabinet, but since I am all about loque when it comes to preparing dinner, I almost never plan ahead for meals. I just get home from work and make something. I am trying to change my evil ways. Dried beans are dirt cheap, you buy them in bulk so the packaging is your own and is reusable, and they are far more delicious than their canned friends.

I need to work on my timing, though. I need to go to bed immediately and those little shits still aren't tender.

Lover of a life of leisure.

Raise your hand if you feel like you need to go on a juice fast.

(I'm raising mine.)

Nothing is more boring than moaning about how you've been eating a bunch of junk (well, not junk, but a surfeit of delicious baked goods and assorted holiday foods) and you're fat, right? So I won't, though it's kind of interesting to me to have these meaty pads atop my hipbones. Let's just say that I'm looking forward to the clean slate feeling of January 1, when leaves are turned over and raw vegetables are consumed and gym activities are undertaken with renewed vigor and the Christmas chocolate is out of the house AT LAST.

We got the last of the opera singers (I think, at least those who can legally get married) married off last night, in a very lovely and Christmassy service at which I predictably cried. There is plenty of evidence of the karaoke reception in my photostream. A really gratifying moment was when I was singing "Always" with my friend Andrew and there was a group slow dance out on the dance floor (thank you, my friends). It was also gratifying whenever the Brit danced with me, both jokingly and for serious, because I do love to shake it like a polaroid picture. I shook it so hard that my neck hurts today, in fact.

This has been a leisurely little holiday season, I tell you what. It's going to be shocking to go back to a regular schedule after days of reading entire books and evenings of family fondue night and playing Apples to Apples Junior with Henry, who is sounding out all the words on the cards like a pro. I gave him The Electric Company for Christmas and he is as into it as I'd hoped--I mean it's perfect for him aesthetically and pedagogically. Apparently he asked his dad to give him some skin the other day, so he is learning already.

We saw "No Country for Old Men" today, which was crazy and incredible. Highly recommended.

Going to the chapel.

C-Mo and the BFS got married yesterday and thanks to their reception, I spent my morning feeling like a complete rookie. Last night I wasn't, though. Last night I was the master of the microphone. One good thing about me is that I will help anyone sing just about anything at karaoke. I also tried a new song, "Walk on By," which is maybe not appropriate for a wedding reception, but if you think about it at least half of all pop songs are not appropriate for wedding receptions. I also did "Love Shack." This was important to me because I have been perturbed for two years, every time it comes up, about the way "Love Shack" was disrespected at the last karaoke wedding reception I attended. Now I can let the healing begin.

So that stuff was all good. The wedding was good. The "party potatoes" served at the reception were good ("ohhhh, this is bad for me," my dad said, after his first taste). We took a lot of prom-style photographs, and that, to me, was hilarious, as you can see at left. BCSM squired me around, which was nice not only because the Brit was at another wedding in a different state, but also because I hadn't seen him in months. I drunk-dialed Dom, which was maybe good, maybe not. He didn't pick up the phone, and that was a solid move on his part.

What was not good is how all the booze-sampling I did led to a really heinous hangover. That in itself might have been manageable with sleep, water, and some me-time on the turlet, but I had to get up fairly early to get in someone else's car with four other people and ride 4+ hours back home. Haha. Hahahaha. You can see where this is going, right? We actually had to pull over on the interstate so I could yak a tiny bit of water out the door. See what I mean about rookie shit?

I left my rookie shit on the side of the highway.

In happier news, Marigoldie tipped me off about some more Wardrobe Remix-related props I have received on the internets: the Wardrobe Remix post at Mightygirl links a couple of my photos. Like her tagline says: famous among dozens.