sing your heart out

Think karaoke. Yeah, got the picture in your mind's eye? Fun, hunh. Good singing, slightly erratic singing, goofball singing, costumed singing, practiced or unpracticed, comletely unprofessional fun. Even the worst of us can be a karaoke star.

Now, lets ramp it up, baby. You know you want to. Instead of a music track as your backup, throw out the tape player and add a band. A professional live band. A bunch of music nuts playing for the delight of whatever can happen when they're backing up unpracticed unprofessional karaoke singers.

And there you have it: Gomeroke.

As the single (slightly nervous) Gomeroke virgin in the new group of pals I was hanging out with, I responded to 'are you gonna get up and sing?' with various versions of 'no, haha', 'um, I don't think so', and 'helllllno'. How ridiculous that I permitted my self-consciousness to be allowed out for the evening with me.

I haven't been out socially in ages; the reasons are numerous, tangled and perhaps slightly ridiculous but it means that once I do go out I feel myself let it out. Alllllll out, even with new friends who I hope to impress. I say 'fuck inhibition, this is great!' and let life happen. There's no way one can just sit there during a group sing-along to 'Ruby Tuesday'. It's impossible or your money back.

L. brought us all bobbing bat headbands in honor of spooktastic Halloween. A smattering o' caribou feathers, two long spiralled metallic pipe cleaners protruding up on either side, with sparkleball-bellied bats hovering above, glittery wings flashing and catching the lights. I brought some glow in the dark necklaces to share, extras from my overexcited expenditures at the party store, when J. wanted a couple of rave-ish toys for himself and a couple of friends for a school dance. (me: you can't just get ONE each, lets buy sixteen!)

I brought shower curtain rings, but try as I may, I couldn't think of any sensible public decorating ideas for the curtain rings (though I did consider a few potentially interesting naughty uses). They were actually an extra set I'd had at home that I'd brought along for K. who just recently moved into a specTACular new apartment - fab-fab-fabulous but missing the shower curtain. The truth is, one day I may find myself with the opportunity to use K's whirlpoolish deep-dish bathtub (why? I'm not sure but it could happen) and well, a bathtub needs a curtain, right?, and a curtain needs rings, right?, and that's just the way it is so quit asking me these questions already - don't you have something to be reading?

Among his other stellar performances, P. did a head-banging rendition of 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia' - complete with a violin solo done by the band guy standing behind P. (band guy reaching his arms around P's shoulders, placing the chinrest on P's left shoulder and the both of them getting violinfunkadelic. L., or rather her alter-ego Heidi Ho, captured Grace Slick with adept sneering growl.

A fella from the State Journal was there (though I'm not sure why), happily snapping away. My attention was paid in measure of drool and covetous thoughts... great digital camera, expansive lenses and multiple flash setup. Wish I could have seen the camera details better but I didn't want to be unseemly and follow the poor guy around asking dumb 'whassat? what does it do? how does this work?' questions. It made more sense to me at the time to compliment his nice haircut and leave it at that. Now? I'm not exactly sure what I was thinking, but I guess the compliment worked because I did not tackle him for his equipment nor was I asked to leave.

When I returned home last night I immediately sat down to look through the song list, writing down preferences, speculating which of them I'd forget the fewest amount of words if I was to lose my place on the lyrics sheet.

Because next time? I'll sing.