2004-12-10 - 1:38 a.m.

Last night was the Office Christmas Party. Before I get to that, I should mention that the night before was Marty Allen at ZuZu's.

Marty decided to decline my best-band-name-in-the-world offer (I'll never tell), and went with Uncle Monsterface, which I do have to admit fits pretty well. Of course Marty played great, mind you.

The Roommate and I really loved the girl that went on before. She had this old French music thing going, and she played the accordion and had pre-recorded stuff and even a slide show to accompany one of her songs. I forgot her name, but I signed her mailing list. Her songs were, however, some of the best written, original songs I've heard in awhile, although I am admittedly a sucker for whimsy.

Okay. All I'll say about the Office Christmas Party is what happens at the party stays at the party. Sorry. Some of us went to a nearby bar afterwards and I got goaded into doing karaoke (for the first time ever--hey, office party--why not?). Oh, and by goaded, I mean that my conditions for goading were sufficiently met--my arm was twisted to the point of breaking. (For once.)

I sang the everliving crap out of U2's One, so I guess finally importing that CD recently paid off. I dunno--I was kind of surprised at my ability to make a good decision having never being had a done sung karaoke afore--big factors were the amount of time where I wouldn't be singing but just standing there holding a beer and a microphone with people looking at me, picking a crowd pleasing song, and picking one that would probably still be in my range even if it was in a different key than I was expecting (I've heard but am not certain that the guy can change the key of the songs--I don't know anything about karaoke--is it MIDI?), and obviously it had to be one I knew pretty well, which removed about three quarters of the songs available to me.

Anyway, I got a really, really, really good reaction. I don't think I'm exxagerrating here, although I was hammered, but if I'm not mistaked, the entire bar, everyone, stopped what they were doing to watch me sing a U2 song, and some people laughed at the parts where I was subtly (although I'm just remembering it as subtle) making fun of Bono, which was great, and, I swear to God, I got tons of applause when I was through. I meen, cheers and whistles and someone even came up to me after.

I dunno. I mean, it's karaoke at a crappy bar, but I'm doing some songs for real pretty soon, and I've been practicing by myself in my apartment and probably pissing off my neighbors who probably think I'm some kind of fruit, and also in front of the Roommate, who knows I'm some kind of fruit, and who is probably bored of the same few songs over and over again, and did you notice how I played that C on the twelfth fret--wasn't that a nice touch?

It was kinda self-esteem-building-esque to sing a random song in front of a roomfull of suits and bums and drunks and colleagues, subsets overlapping in a sloppy Venn diagram, and then get a really good reaction. Don't ask me why.

Oh, it was also the first time I've ever sung in public where I held the microphone in my hand, and with a "band" backing me up, as opposed to my guitar.

I dunno. Why. I'm. Still. Going. On. About. This.

Time to mess with the Roommate's X-mas playlist.