Hipster karaoke triumph...

A few Saturdays ago was the 5th anniversary party of hipster karaoke, so I went with some friends.

My one (white) friend from Mississippi sang "Me and My Bobby McGee" before I got there - I was at my one friend with the cat's for Yom Kippur break-fast dinner - and my one friend with the cat sang "Not in These Shoes" (and tore the place up; she did a great job of story-telling, it's a story song).

The place seemed crowded when I went in, and since the host was giving away free t-shirts to great performers, right when I got in I put in Eric Carmen's "All by Myself", since I knew it was a big song, and I've always wanted to sing it.

Only, I was in a very happy mood, so like a few songs before mine came up, I was like, "Oh shit," so I started chugging beers and thinking about things that made me despondent and separate from everyone, like, "Even if I have a good performance, the crowd will like it for the wrong reasons," since to make that song work, you have to do it seriously, no irony or winking at the audience, otherwise it turns retarded.

As it turns out, I did the first verse with authority since I'm 30 -

"when I was young/
I never needed anyone/
and making love was just for fun/
those days are gone?

- and I knew that I knew the second verse but couldn't think of what it was, and then when I got to it, I remembered it verse-by-verse as I sang that it's about calling all your friends and no-one's home, and it had reminded me of the Tues.-Wed.-Thurs.-Fri. of that very past week when I had texted a bunch of people but no plans materialized (for 4 nights in a row!), and how that sucked, and so I nailed it.

People applauded during the instrumental, but I kept myself distant, and I did well through all the repeats, though I should have attempted to soar on the final chorus repeat and sing everything up an octave, though I don't know that anyone noticed, since everyone was applauding and as the music was gradually fading out the host was wrapping a t-shirt around my shoulders like a towel around the shoulders of a boxer after winning a long and brutal match.

Later, a couple people stopped me and said it was the best song of the night, and another said that you could tell I meant business when I strode up to the microphone after the host called my name, but I don't think I took their opinions too seriously because they were (white).

The one (black) girl in the room, though, who *I* think sang the best song of the night - "Mamma Said Knock You Out"; my one (white) friend from Mississippi did too, and we were joking that she was at the wrong karaoke night - did compliment me, which I appreciated, and I filled her in on krunk karaoke and she was stoked and might be going some Monday night now.