K IS FOR KARAOKE

The first time I ever sang karaoke was at a friend's wedding reception.  I loved it.  However, I didn't become an avid karaoke singer until I married my now ex-husband.  Together we found a place that did karaoke six nights a week... not that we could go six nights a week.  However, there is a big difference between a club that exclusively does karaoke and karaoke that happens in a restaurant a few hours one night a week.  I say this as someone who had participated in both events.

If you will recall my previous post on college majors, I did choose Music initially in college.  There is a reason for that.  I love music.  I love singing.   I was that  girl who danced around singing into her hairbrush.  Sometimes I forget the power that music has to make me feel amazing inside.  Music is a cure for the blues.  Putting in a CD, scrolling through YouTube and singing along to my favorites, or plugging in my IPOD are all good alternatives to karaoke.  In fact, YouTube is my practice forum before I go sing karaoke anywhere.  It is always good to run through a song a few times and YouTube almost always has a Lyric Video to help a person out!

I sing karaoke for fun.  I also sing a WIDE variety of songs.  In fact, it can be a long time before I recycle a song.  I am not one of those people who sings the same song over and over until it is perfect.  There are many people who run the karaoke circuit who sing the same four to six songs every time you hear them.  Granted, they sound pretty darn good on those songs, but those are the only songs they ever sing.  (It is something of *yawnfest* for the regulars.)  There are those who sing to impress and those who sing for the rollicking good fun of it.  I fall into the latter category.  My songs aren't perfect.  I do strive to entertain while I am singing.  And if I manage to land on a really terrible version of a song that I thought I could sing, I have been known to apologize after... I once said, "This sounded much better in the car." The entire bar laughed.  That was at the Real Karaoke Place.  Anyway, karaoke fans always give you points just for getting up there and trying.

I have been trying for the last three hours to upload a video of me singing last week at a local restaurant from my IPOD onto this blog.  Zero success.  So, I tried to upload it onto Photobucket.  The upload also failed there.  Apparently, it is trapped in my IPOD forever to be shared with no one EVER.  This actually speaks volumes about my understand of everything "techy."  It took me a very long time to figure out how to even work the camera in the IPOD.  So, there you go.

Karaoke Rating ~ Passion

A Soul Vacation

Well, I am late getting started with my next post in this series.

I have actually had a busy day.

Went with a friend to see The Dark Knight Rises. Wow. What an awesome movie. I refuse to accept that it is the last one. Christian Bale absolutely must make another Batman movie. They lined up the dominoes so perfectly for the next movie that they cannot NOT make it. It is just unacceptable. Joseph Gordon-Levitt knocks it out of the park in everything he does. Seriously, this guy is seriously starting to make me really like him. As in he might get added to my Cannot.Miss.Anything.He.Does List. That is a tough list to get on, but he has worked overtime to get there. And he has sold me. Or maybe I am owned. Not sure how that one works. Whatevs. And Anne Hathaway shocked me with her dazzling performance, too. Everyone was just spot-on terrific. This movie just nailed it all the way around. Now, if the real life crazy people would just stay at home, the world would be a perfect place. Big sigh. Moving on....

Then we met up with friends for some dinner and karaoke. In honor of the Train concert this Friday, I sang some Drops of Jupiter. I can't say that it is my best singing performance, but I can pull it off with enthusiasm. Woot.

Now, on to some more stuff off of California 37. I just read on the message boards on YouTube that someone had seen them in concert and they performed this song. Pat apparently said at that concert that this song is something of a continuation on a theme to Drops of Jupiter. By the time the song was over the whole place was in tears, or so says the person who left the comment. I can believe it.

Here is the Studio Sessions clip of You Can Finally Meet My Mom. It is only a couple of minutes. However, I love these clips. They are so revealing about the song and the band.



Okay, let's listen to the song in its entirety.



I can see right now that I better pack some tissues for this concert because I am going to lose it on that song. I know me and the floodgates are going to OPEN WIDE. I can't listen to it right here without crying like a little girl.

If you are now sitting there thinking, but I know Drops of Jupiter. Okay, maybe I only thought I knew Drops of Jupiter. What am I missing???? You want to hear it again. Am I right? If that was Drops of Jupiter 2, what did you miss about Drops of Jupiter (1), because you weren't pulling out your hanky as you drove down the expressway when you heard it the first, second, third, and fourth times???? Well, let's take another listen...



And there it is. That soul vacation that I liked to imagine was one to Jamaica or Hawaii was a bit more permanent, wasn't it? Hence all the references to sailing across the sun, falling from shooting stars, etc. And then there are the questions. Did the wind sweep you off your feet? Is heaven overrated? And, most important of all, do you miss me????? And let's whip out the tissues because the crying has started again. I think I might not be able to karaoke that song anymore. It may be joining the long list of things I can no longer sing, because I just start bawling like a baby midway through. I don't have that capacity to separate myself from the song no matter how many times I have heard it. I am unable to build up an immunity.

So, today we are looking at the softer side of Train. Yesterday was all about telling your truth even when it might hurt someone else. It was also about having a little bit of fun. Today, we went on a Soul Vacation.

Can you imagine no love, pride, deep-fried chicken
Your best friend always sticking up for you... even when I know you're wrong
Can you imagine no first dance, freeze dried romance,
Five-hour phone conversation
The best soy latte that you ever had... And me

When it's my time, I am definitely going to be hopping a shooting star. You can count on it. What kind of Soul Vacation would it be without riding a star?


image found on facebook... again
where I spend way too much time

N is for Not Afraid

A friend of mine emailed me with some comments on the last blog. She indicated, once again, that I am much funnier in bullet points than I am in paragraphs. I think it is because I have a sarcastic personality and you can't really get a good jab in with a paragraph format. It is only in bullet points can you sink one. I am a real fun one at parties, too. Nothing out of me and then *BAM* I nail the sarcastic jolt when least expected. Of course, my friend had a few other comments. I think I shall address those and anything else that comes to mind in bullet points, since I am insanely funnier that way.

• She says that I shouldn't have laughed at H-Girl when she said she was "all about the learning." That sort of behavior on my part is likely just to make the kid angry at me.
• I say that the kid needs someone to call her out on her crap. She needs to know that she isn't snowing me like she is other people. Kids don't respect people they think they are manipulating. I want her to know that I have her number. 'Nuff said.
• My friend also indicated that blogger had this nifty bullet point program. Peeps, I am utterly lost on a computer. Hand to God.
• My mother used to tell me daily when I was a kid that I would lose my head if it weren't attached to my shoulders.
• What does this have to do with anything?
• Well, I know that there are some of you who think I should just learn how to do the design on my website. You are thinking, "It can't be that hard."
• I thought like that, too, for about three hours after I bought the domain name and my web hosting site. Into the fourth hour, I very nearly chucked my laptop out the window.
• Eventually I called the 24-hour 800 number help line to get them to put up a page indicating my site was under construction because I could not figure out how to write that on a BLANK PAGE and put that up.
• Yes, it is that bad. And that is where the head and shoulders business figures in.
• I tell you that and I share you this thing about the bullet points for this reason: I have been on blogger for over a year and didn't know that in the menu bar that it would create bullet points for me.
• Right now I am looking at the quotations and I can't figure out by sheer reasoning what that will do if i click on it. Clearly it will do something regarding quotations, but what? what? what?
• It should be obvious, but it isn't.
• It's hard to believe right now that I graduated with a liberal arts degree from college, isn't it?
• I know. I am having trouble digesting it, too.
• On Saturday night, we went to the pizza place for food and karaoke.
• Our usual karaoke guy wasn't there because his band was playing somewhere so some friends of his were filling in. This was a new experience for us.
• Not so much for them. They have their own business and their own equipment.
• Once again, too many kids were singing for our taste. Pretty much any kids are too many because most can't sing. They scream or talk into the microphone and it is monotone.
• However, the kicker this past Saturday was that there were only 8 people on the sheet to sing, but the teenagers took over every time it came to them. How did they do this? They sang solo, they sang duets, they sang trios.
• Three girls managed to hog the microphone for forty minutes every time the rotation got back to them.
• So, we we were there for three hours and sang three times. You do the math on that one. Eight people. Three hours. Everyone should have gotten to sing a lot.
• We almost didn't sing that third time because my mom was tired of listening to teenagers and kids scream into the microphone. The lady came around with the sheet to get our song to speed up the process, and my mom asked how far out we were. Turns out two kids were ahead of us, one of whom was singing.
• At that point, I was in favor of waiting and singing. We were there for three hours and had only been able to sing twice. Mom was ready to go, and said something about there being too many kids.
• I knew that was a pointless drum to beat. When you go to karaoke at a restaurant, there will be kids.
• The lady said if you want no kids you should go to a place that is over 21, and she was right.
• I said that the real problem was letting small groups of people monopolize the microphone. It was not right. It would be like me singing, my mom singing, me and my mom singing, my mom and another friend singing, the other friend singing, me and the other friend singing, me, mom and the other friend singing. We could tie up the works for forty minutes just like you have let those girls do all night, but we haven't.
• She didn't like what I said, but she admitted that it was a mistake and wouldn't be happening again.
• Now, would it not be happening again because I said something, or would it not be happening again, period?
• I got a nasty comment from the guy running the machine about being impatient to sing when he called me up.
• That tells me that even though the woman was very gracious to me, and admitted that I was right, she didn't relay it back that way to her partner.
• Most people just leave and don't come back if they don't like something. My mom said that if she finds out that our regular karaoke guy isn't going to be there, we will rethink going there in the future. And that was after I said something.
• People don't like confrontation. I didn't like it when I was married. My ex made it so uncomfortable that I eventually stopped speaking out about what I did and didn't like. What is and isn't acceptable.
• I am not doing that anymore. It is unacceptable to hog the microphone at a karaoke joint. I will tell you nicely. You can make one jab at me, but not two. And if it keeps happening I won't come back.
• I guarantee you this: for every one person who tells how it is, there are twenty who are thinking it and just not coming back. Be grateful for that person who speaks out.
• And if you are someone who is afraid to speak out, try it. It feels so good. It if is your truth, then it isn't wrong to say it. It is never wrong to speak honestly and from your heart.
• Trust me on this: the worst thing in the world is losing the ability to speak your own truth.
• The first Marshall Mathers song I listened to was Not Afraid. It was what hooked me on Eminem. The song is about not being afraid to do what you need to do, speak your truth, be yourself.
• Before you say that you hate rap or hip hop, know what you are talking about. I thought that I hated it, too. I hated it BEFORE I listened to it. It is dangerous to make those kind of calls. And it is also dangerous to hate an entire genre of music, because you never know when a specific piece of music will jump out and hit you where you live. Just sayin'.
• My mom has been watching OWN (the Oprah Winfrey Network) and loving it. Apparently, there was something on there about the new Oreo cookie. It is a regular Oreo covered in chocolate.
• I couldn't quite follow if it was on one of the shows or if it was a commercial... Anyway, the entire family sans the mom are sitting around the table eating these cookies and talking in Martian about them. (In other words, my mom had no idea what they were saying.)
• Then the mom came in and she tried one and my mom tried repeating what she said. She kept at it until I figured it out. That was when I realized that the kids and hubs are talking in modern day slang. I hated to break the news to mom that the family were not taken over by aliens.
• What was the giveaway phrase, you ask?
• Shut the back door!

photo found at www.weheartit.com

INSPIRATION STRUCK A DAY LATE

You know how some people are perpetually a day late and a dollar short. Well, I suppose that would be me today. I am not saying that I qualify as "perpetually" a day late and a dollar short. Just today. It would seem that many people have embraced Saturdays to post an inspirational song. Unfortunately, I already had my Saturday post half written in my head, and was already committed to it, so I felt the need to go with it.


However, I can always get down with a reason to cruise youtube for music. Or for any footage actually. I am a youtube junkie. If I didn't know it already, I would never try heroin or crack, because it turns out that I have a highly addictive personality. Or meth. No meth for me. Thanks anyway. I learned in 7th grade health class that you can't really get off these drugs once you start, so there is no point in starting. People can rationalize that they are the exception, but that is a big fat lie. Or cocaine. I forgot the cocaine. None of that either. All it gets you is to spend your money on the drugs until you run out. Then you steal, lie, and do even worse stuff, until someone throws your stupid self into rehab, (if you live that long) and then the really awful part starts because you go through the withdrawal period. So, I made the decision at twelve that "No," to all of that stuff was the right choice for me. Turns out that was pretty smart because once I do decide on something, I am freakishly committed to it. We have rolled back around to the aforementioned youtube. If youtube were actually crack in disguise, I would be a goner.


I forgot what we were talking about. Inspirational songs. Right. Anyway, since I missed that for yesterday, I will not use their cute little logo and just do my own variation. Besides, I am not really a follower. Have you noticed that? I am an Aries. Aries is the Ram. It is the 1st sign on the zodiac. It is the leader. Let me give you an idea of the personality of the Aries. Let's say there are a group of people (me included) that get stranded in the desert. Maybe we are in a small plane and it goes down. Pilot is dead and we have no clue where we are. Lots of arguing about what to do. After two days and no one comes to find us. We all think that surely we will be missed and they must track us because of that box thing all planes have; it begins to dawn that our plane didn't have the black box or it somehow malfunctioned when we crashed. Our supplies are low and everyone has an idea about what we should do. I would be the person who stands up and says, "Everyone shut the fuck up. (I apologize for the potty mouth. But I would probably use the "f" word after two days stranded in the desert.) I don't give a rat's ass what you do. I am going to take a bottle of water and my provisions for the day and start walking. I am picking a direction and I am going. If I am going to die out here, so be it. But I am going to die trying to get somewhere, rather than die sitting here listening to you argue." That is pretty much how Aries rolls. I never said I was nice. In a crisis, I can be a mean little biotch. I'm a lot like Jack on the show LOST. Pretty much think I know everything and, once everyone decides that I am the leader, well I will die for the group when push comes to shove.

How do I keep getting away from my goal? Inspirational songs. This first one is a song that I often will sing in a karaoke bar. Particularly if I am in a karaoke bar I have never been in before. I once landed in a bar outside Nashville, where there are a lot of really good singers. A lot of rising star wannabes. It was probably the most nervous I have ever been singing karaoke. I chose this song because I know it backward, forward, and upside down. I have been singing it into a hairbrush since I was in elementary school. My parents had an extensive record collection. This song was my favorite (Don't forget to cut off my music player at the bottom of the screen):



You might be wondering how that karaoke experience went in that bar outside of Nashville. Pretty good actually. This guy I was seeing, who I later lived to regret dating, but that is another story altogether, was standing at the bar talking to his ex-girlfriend. Yeah, you read that right. Anyway, she is this really good singer. I know this because he talked about it ad nauseum. The more I type, the more I want to kick him in the nuts. Alas, he is safe because he lives far away. Anyway, he tells me that as soon as I started singing, she said something like. "Finally, someone who can sing in here tonight." She lived to regret those words when she craned her head around the bar and saw it was me. So, I guess I was pretty good.

On a totally different note, I grew up in one of the coolest eras ever. The 80s. I saw the launch of MTV. Matter of fact, I can't tell you how many hours I sat and watched MTV. It was addictive. I think we've been here before. The thing was you got a new "snack" every 3-4 minutes. So, if you didn't like the previous song, well it was only a few minutes of suffering before you got something else. Because it was new and different, the bands and singers went out of their way to come up with interesting videos. Every now and then you just got the band playing a song live in concert, but the bands saw the opportunity to break out, and really use this medium to stretch, and make a name for themselves. This is one band that did a FANTASTIC job with the song and the video and then nothing. I go on record for saying it is one of the best.videos.ever.



Okay, well that definitely wasn't in the spirit of the Inspirational Saturday Songs that I read yesterday, but it was a typically random Robin post with some (hopefully) interesting stuff thrown in. Happy Sunday everyone!