Going to karaoke again tonight.

I'm going to karaoke again tonight, and I'm excited. I had gone to karaoke at a Korean place last month -- a group of masters students had rented a room with some student group budget money, and I tagged along for fun and ate the peking dumplings the Korean woman would bring in and sing a song every once in a while, shit to try out like "Mama Mia" (never again!) and old standards I hadn't sung too often, like "Superstar" and "Both Sides Now"; the real highlight of the night was finding out that this little petite Filipino girl could rap, and that my one friend can do everything from hair rock to her signature song, the Association's "Along Comes Mary" -- but the place just didn't have the atmosphere of the gyros lounge I like, or the hipster place.

In fact, I went to karaoke at the hipster place last weekend. The host is this 40-year old guy from Texas who sleeps on friends' couches on a rotating schedule so he can live a life of having his own band and hosting karaoke on the side, and not only does he have a huge mullet and these gigantic buck teeth with braces and a big old pot belly and this tuxedo-like sports coat, but he also hosts the karaoke in a very atmospheric basement of an American Legion Hall, and calls everyone who comes up to sing a "dreamer", which is incredibly endearing.

("Okay, our first dreamer of the night is [someone's name]", he'll be like, or, after someone does a good job like my one friend who does that Association song [though in this case she sang "Chain of Fools"], he'll clap a couple time and then say into the mike, "Wow, folks, we have a veteran dreamer here!" It's nice since on the one hand he genuinely recognizes how people live through their songs sincerely, but on the other hand it does also function to good-humoredly keep people in their place, since no matter how good you do, somehow you'll always still be a dreamer.)

Also endearing was the fact that he kicked off the night with Looking Glass's "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)", only in the very last repetition of the chorus, instead of saying, "My life my love and my lady/ is the sea", he kept saying "My life my love and my lady/ is karaoke".

Anyhow, I have to say that the high point of the night is that I made the host respect me, which was apparent from the first song. I ended up singing "Georgy Girl", and when he was like, "Okay, the first dreamer of the night is [me]", he then added that not only did I have to dig deep in the songbook to find it -- always a good thing! -- but that it was a song he liked and that it was the first time it had ever been sung at his karaoke night, so I was breaking it in. I fucked up the first verse since I couldn't drop down an octave -- the song was way the fuck too high since it's written for a woman -- but I did that on the second verse, and the host whistled along on all the whistling parts and did this little 'walk in place funkily' dance along with his whistling.

For that song, by the way, I got a free whiskey, since, I didn't realize at the time, the first dreamer of the night always gets a free drink.

To get back to things, though, by the end of the night when I got around to singing "Sheena is a Punk Rocker", I knew I had cinched the host's respect.

The best news of the night, though, was that my one friend who likes Dylan and Merle Haggard and their ilk I think got hooked on karaoke - he got a guitar a few months ago and has been practicing - and he did a really good job singing "Like a Rolling Stone", though, as I predicted, no one would clap.

(When my one other friend turned to me during the song and noted that he was doing a good job, I was like, "But no one will clap," and she was like, "For Christ's sake, why do you have to be so fucking prophetic all the time," though she was a good sport and admitted I was right after the song was over and no one clapped.)

The bartender liked us too. He was this short over-sexed Hispanic veteran, and since I had my hand in my pocket during "Georgy Girl", he told me I must have been squeezing my balls to sing that high. To my one friend who sang Dylan, though, he just told him a couple times what a good job he did. When I asked him what songs he sings, he said Tom Jones and then, giving a few pelvic thrusts to the air, said, "Maybe it's because I'm a lover." When I asked him to specify, though, he just shrugged and was like, "'Delilah', mostly".