Last month I became obsessed with hacking/modding my son’s Wii. Among hundreds of other things, it is now a fully functional karaoke machine with a staggering library of songs. But alas, in these days of round-the-clock parenting, who has the luxury of fooling with karaoke? As it turns out, when Katt gets cranky, one surefire way of inducing a nap is to sit with her on one of those big-blue-middle-aged-women-workout-balls, and sing 20 minutes of karaoke to her. She takes 2-3 naps a day, so yes I’ve been doing a lot of singing. It’s all preparation for my triumphant return to public karaoke. It’s been 5 years.
My first public karaoke experience went well. It was in a rugby bar and I sang “The Battle of New Orleans”, which now that I’m a karaoke expert, I recognize to be an easy number. The second time was in a bowling alley. I thought I’d be a real wise-guy and sing Brittney Spears. What I didn’t realize is that in karaoke, it is important to know how to sing ALL THE LYRICS, not just the punchy oops baby I did it again part. Luckily I was wearing a luchador mask, so my shame and humiliation were hidden beneath a black and blue Mexican wrestling mask. What really blows is that before Oops Baby started, I had commanded everyone’s full attention by grabbing the mic and shouting in a Mexican accent, “I did not come here for a party…<pause>…I CAME FOR A FIESTAAAAAAAAAA!”.
