Let's Give Em Something to Sing About
I’m now officially into a regular schedule here in DC. That means that we’ve begun to stray from regular life and spice things up a bit. On Wednesday one of ballerinas, Carli, had a birthday! She used it as an opportunity to throw a crazy karaoke party for the company.
Little did I know that people around here are serious about their karaoke. For the day and show before the party, everyone was going around claiming songs and talking about the last time they all went. Who sang what, the craziness that ensued, etc. When I’ve karaoke’d with my besties in NYC, of course people have their favorite songs. And of course since we’re musical theatre people, these songs are usually ones that we sang in class in college. No one would ever really officially “claim” one, but there’s no way I’d touch some songs, knowing that so-and-so would be pissed. Apparently the same goes here, but to a more official extent. There were bizarre stories about people singing their signature, and I was going in blind. But if you know me, you know that once gently prodded, I freak over karaoke (SOMA kids will tell you about the times that they had to pry mics out of my hand), so I knew this was gonna be good.
Post-show I cleaned up and walked over with Sal and Adam, all the way to adorable Dupont Circle. Supposedly this is the gay area of DC, but I haven’t seen evidence of this yet. The bar we headed to, ‘Japone’ was decked out with a huge sushi bar, but all we needed were drinks to get started. There were about 25 or 30 of us, and we filled almost the whole place, aside from a table of six people who were about to become our friends. Carli got things started by singing, and from then on chaos ensued. Some people were hesitant, but luckily it was the kind of place where you put in your request and get to sing two minutes later. There’s nothing worse than trying to karaoke only to leave four hours later still waiting for your song to be called. Because it was so fast, it was easy to put in requests and then bully people into singing by shoving the mic into their hands.
I was a little nervous, because everyone was doing a great job of making this competition-free karaoke. One of the dangers of going karaoke-ing with performers is that people will get up and try to out-sing each other. It’s easy to get caught up in that, but it’s not as fun. Everyone here had mastered the art of picking fun and crazy songs and then acting like a fool. Even the strangers at the next table had it down. After a drunken announcement that one of the guys was “the most decorated marine in the war against terror”, they sang the karaoke hit “I Wanna Fuck You Like An Animal”. Classy. With their hardcore hick Southern accents it was perfect. Our favorite was the girl who then tried to rap, and eventually finished off with Patrick Swayze’s “She’s Like the Wind”. I can’t type it in a Southern accent, but just thinking about it makes me crack up.
All this song-selection perfection made me doubt my standard (It’s Raining Men – it won me the title of Dance Marathon Idol 2003 at NU) because I knew it could be pretty hardcore. Instead, someone suggested the classic ‘Let’s Give ‘Em Something to Talk About’. It’s a great song, but it’s got some history with my classmates at Northwestern… a long story involving a fight between friends, where the final blow was the appropriation of the song by the winner. I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole at home, but here… why not! And of course by the time I was goaded into singing we’d been drinking for quite some time. I got one of the dancers, Janice, to come up as my back-up singer, and somehow in the middle of the song felt the need to demonstrate my super-human strength by lifting her with one arm. I must say that the whole performance turned out to be a big hit. We all sang a billion more times until the lights on the bar were suddenly on, and Janice and I were staggering out, escaping from the decorated marines who said that we sang like angels. I love DC!
Little did I know that people around here are serious about their karaoke. For the day and show before the party, everyone was going around claiming songs and talking about the last time they all went. Who sang what, the craziness that ensued, etc. When I’ve karaoke’d with my besties in NYC, of course people have their favorite songs. And of course since we’re musical theatre people, these songs are usually ones that we sang in class in college. No one would ever really officially “claim” one, but there’s no way I’d touch some songs, knowing that so-and-so would be pissed. Apparently the same goes here, but to a more official extent. There were bizarre stories about people singing their signature, and I was going in blind. But if you know me, you know that once gently prodded, I freak over karaoke (SOMA kids will tell you about the times that they had to pry mics out of my hand), so I knew this was gonna be good.
Post-show I cleaned up and walked over with Sal and Adam, all the way to adorable Dupont Circle. Supposedly this is the gay area of DC, but I haven’t seen evidence of this yet. The bar we headed to, ‘Japone’ was decked out with a huge sushi bar, but all we needed were drinks to get started. There were about 25 or 30 of us, and we filled almost the whole place, aside from a table of six people who were about to become our friends. Carli got things started by singing, and from then on chaos ensued. Some people were hesitant, but luckily it was the kind of place where you put in your request and get to sing two minutes later. There’s nothing worse than trying to karaoke only to leave four hours later still waiting for your song to be called. Because it was so fast, it was easy to put in requests and then bully people into singing by shoving the mic into their hands.
I was a little nervous, because everyone was doing a great job of making this competition-free karaoke. One of the dangers of going karaoke-ing with performers is that people will get up and try to out-sing each other. It’s easy to get caught up in that, but it’s not as fun. Everyone here had mastered the art of picking fun and crazy songs and then acting like a fool. Even the strangers at the next table had it down. After a drunken announcement that one of the guys was “the most decorated marine in the war against terror”, they sang the karaoke hit “I Wanna Fuck You Like An Animal”. Classy. With their hardcore hick Southern accents it was perfect. Our favorite was the girl who then tried to rap, and eventually finished off with Patrick Swayze’s “She’s Like the Wind”. I can’t type it in a Southern accent, but just thinking about it makes me crack up.
All this song-selection perfection made me doubt my standard (It’s Raining Men – it won me the title of Dance Marathon Idol 2003 at NU) because I knew it could be pretty hardcore. Instead, someone suggested the classic ‘Let’s Give ‘Em Something to Talk About’. It’s a great song, but it’s got some history with my classmates at Northwestern… a long story involving a fight between friends, where the final blow was the appropriation of the song by the winner. I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole at home, but here… why not! And of course by the time I was goaded into singing we’d been drinking for quite some time. I got one of the dancers, Janice, to come up as my back-up singer, and somehow in the middle of the song felt the need to demonstrate my super-human strength by lifting her with one arm. I must say that the whole performance turned out to be a big hit. We all sang a billion more times until the lights on the bar were suddenly on, and Janice and I were staggering out, escaping from the decorated marines who said that we sang like angels. I love DC!
posted by Beth at 9:20 PM
2 Comments:
Yay for moving to your new apartment! Love, DLADK
I think you will have to organize Karoke at the next fam. reunion.
Love, TK
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