Karaoke review: The new place.

So, last Friday night I went to the bar behind the gyros place for their monthly karaoke night. Right after I sat down Patrice ran over and hugged me and said she was so glad I came back, and Kathy behind the bar gave me a smile and one of those half close your upraised hand in a cute "hi!" gesture from behind the bar. The guy running the karaoke machine had a mustache and a cowboy hat on.

Right after I came in -- I came in like an hour late and my friends arrived shortly right after; the karaoke runs 8-12 and we thought getting there by 9 would give it plenty of time to heat up -- someone sang someone's cover of "In the Still of the Night", and the karaoke host said he'd buy a pitcher of beer for anyone who could name who did the original version. The place got quiet and I yelled out "The Platters!" and someone from the bar started clapping slowly and people generally nodded their heads as if they were gravely impressed, but the guy was like, "No, actually it's the Penguins." If I had had that shit down, I would have made my name their forever.

Overall, the book isn't bad. The ABBA is spotty, but they've got Clarence Carter's "Patches", Roy Orbison's cover of the "Hucklebuck", the Hollies' "Air that I Breathe", and Dion and the Belmont's "Donna the Primadonna", so it's not all bad.

The place was filled with Iowa people who were in town for a football game, and Patrice would occasionally go and dance with surprisingly unobnoxious frat guys when they sang, so I decided to try to capture the vibe going on with "Pancho and Lefty". People paid attention at first, but the song goes on and if you don't have the vocal quality of a Willie Nelson to make it interesting, it doesn't work, so by the time I finished, even though I was in tune, only one person clapped.

One of my friends got up to sing Peter, Paul, and Mary's version of "Puff the Magic Dragon", which I thought was a horrible choice, though I didn't say so, but it turned out it worked, especially when the song got too much for her in the middle and she dropped her voice and was like, "Damn, I need a puff right now." That got a cheer from Marlene at the end of the bar.

The next song I got up was the Carpenters' "Superstar", and when the host announced my name, he in his cowboy hat gave me a smile and a little wink as I walked up and he handed me the microphone -- what did that even mean!?!? -- and as soon as it cued up and the opening started to ring out, this one fat chick around my age who had her tits crammed into a tight black shirt and all these rings on turned to her friend next to her and I could see her mouthing, "I love this song." Overall, it worked.

After that, a middle-aged woman at the next table behind us turned to me and started talking to me about celebrities she knows, which I shall right about in a separate post, shortly.

My last song I had up was the Supremes' "Love Child". I have the lyrics of that song down -- the verses are almost rap-like, in their rhythm, offset rhymes, and intensity -- though the "I'll always love you" part is still too high for me to do comfortably. Still, though, when Marlene waved me over at the end of the song, she just flipped her head back and gave me a few claps when I came up and was like, "Excellent." She told me I should come back next time, and I said something about how much fun the Iowa people were too, and to that she was like, "Bus them in!"

Towards 12:30pm -- they held the karaoke over, that's how good the place was -- an Iowan came up to us and asked me and my friends if we knew where a good strip club was. All the ones we knew weren't in the area, but my friend sent him over to ask the Greek owner, who had been sitting in back, from which position he had been sending around devilled eggs and cheese on toothpicks and popcorn, and for the next five minutes me and my (hammered) friends just watched the Greek owner and the Iowan talk with their hands about how to get to the nearest strip club.