Truesday: Taking Your Stage

Model airplanes: Nice and structured. Reflective and focused. Alone-time. The scent of the glue eventually makes you think that the deep X-Acto slicing of your own index finger is HILARIOUS! And after all is said and done, you have your very own squadron of miniature planes; the main trick of each is that they can float on water. Sweet.

Playing an instrument: Nothing quite as life-affirming as the creation of one’s own music. It’s YOUR sound. Creation pulled from the greyest of mind matter. Just bang away on that drum kit and tell yourself that someone with your raw rhythmic talent deserves to be touring with a band like Korn circa 1997, freebasing low-grade suburbanite crack and snorting toilet bowl cleaner with hobo roadies and large-breasted tequila reps.

Raising wolverines: The smell is its own reward!

But not everyone needs to be so standard in their attempts at venting the steam built up by our monotonous motions. For myself, the prescription is rather easy.

I simply need to make a complete ass of myself in public every now and again.

It was two Tuesdays back, July 3rd, and I didn’t have to work the following day. Sensing the subconscious need to stretch out a bit, I met up with my brother at Deville for a couple of congratulatory drinks to honor an achievement of his. Honestly, it was meant to be just a couple.

But when I saw them setting up the karaoke, well, let’s just say that my brain became overwhelmed with the desire to bring shame upon myself. Booze was bought, calls were made, and a long night began.

That initial couple of drinks wandered off into five, which likely doubled sometime soon after that, and by the time the stage was properly set to receive over-vodka'd Journey enthusiasts, I was quite literally frothing at the mouth. A friend and I decided that we HAD to rock that shit, so we set in on the song book to find something magical.

And find we did.

We were not the first to go up, but I believe that was because I, being the chosen scribe, had so much trouble writing my selection on a piece of paper. Contrary to the lore of many an author, heavy drinking and writing do not mix well. You might as well use your feet (shoes or no shoes, it matters not), because it'll all end up illegible scribble scrabble anyway. This can be a significant karaoke hurdle to clear. You see, there’s a many-digit code which corresponds to the specific song you want, and if you fuck that code up, you’ll get stuck trying to sing some shitty Dio disaster instead of that secret karaoke banger, the one which would have been so important to the world there would’ve been multitudes of virgin births upon hearing it.

The code MUST come correct. And correct it was.

Eventually.

When my drunk ass was finally called up to ruin our chosen tune, I noticed how many other people were there on the patio, sitting out at all the tables, facing the stage. It felt exceptionally crowded, though certainly not unmanageable. Like a healthy Friday night. And they all appeared to be there FOR the karaoke: a Tuesday night ritual dating back a ways, which I had erroneously thought was now defunct.

How wrong I was.

Normally, getting up on stage to expose oneself to public ridicule requires heavy consideration, and should only be done after careful deliberation. But one must be careful with that because if you sink yourself into too much deliberation, you’ll simply talk yourself out of it. You can ALWAYS talk yourself out of something, and that’s a perfectly understandable defense measure.

But a karaoke mistake isn’t likely to kill anyone, so the only reason for trepidation is the potential humiliation involved. Luckily, I was exceptionally drunk and held little concern for the perceptions of strangers. Further luck provided for my cohort to be equally unconcerned.

The song selected was Frank Sinatra’s My Way. This is an important but utterly common karaoke song to choose. Hell, even Sid Vicious took a turn. It’s second only to Bon Jovi’s entire Slippery When Wet album in terms of being karaoke vanilla. But that’s alright, provided the singer can match the suffocating weight of Sinatra’s bravado.

We did not match such bravado.

The song starts out quiet and builds on itself, inventing drama where it’s required. And the way Frank belted it out, that drama would make you want to cry. Like he was trying to explain something important to you about what it means to be alive. Free will, fear, strength in character, and vision. He left his amazing legacy out there for anyone willing to take it, tucked in the time and verse of that song.

A lasting testament to a man of impressive stature and pride.

Our version, in tight contrast, involved: falling down, repeatedly bumping into each other on the stage, spilling beer all over ourselves, lots of “spirit kicks”, rearranged or repeated lyrics, and several slurred shouts of “WHOO! YEAH!” interspersed throughout. Karaoke crowds are generally a faithless beast, but if you fuck up a handful of special classics (What a Wonderful World, Unchained Melody, Baby Got Back), they will violently turn on you like a teenaged daughter. They’ll drop the whole golf-clap thing and stare at you like you just finished punching their mother in the ear.

But we didn’t get that reaction. I was pretty tossed, so I couldn’t say for sure whether it was irritation, confusion, fear, sadness, or unfettered fury that floated up to the stage. But I like to think it was inspiration. Because if WE were willing to do it like THAT, then no one would have an excuse to fear the mic for the rest of the night. We were certainly easy to upstage.

It was an absolute atrocity to Old Blue Eyes and his memory, but fuck it. ‘Twas for a good cause.

Sometimes, when the steam needs to be vented a bit, you just have to do it YOUR way.