magicks

In the last three days, Joseph Pat and I have had two pretty great karaoke experiences.

The lesser of the two, tonight's, was at Baby Ketten. Joseph was dead-set on a KMFDM double feature, so he went up and belted out, all growly-ragelike, "A Drug Against War," and then I got up a bit later and eked my way through "Juke Joint Jezebel." By the second half of the song, I'd found a rhythm with angry-singing. I'm pretty sure I was borderline ridiculous, but it was fun, and I think they put effects on my voice to help cover for my ridiculousness.

Speaking of voice effects, it wasn't actually Joseph or I who stole tonight's show. It was a drunk Mexican dude doing some Lady Gaga song. For his song, they'd turned on the autotuner. This meant, no matter what words he sung, or how many lines behind the song he was, his voice was autotuned to the melody and it sounded (artificially) appropriate. This worked great when he spent a verse singing "wow-ow-ow-ow-ow," or when he sang "Oh my god, I have to wake up in the morning, what am I doing? Hey, these words are in French and I'm a Mexican," instead of the lines on the screen. In fact, it made the whole thing a brilliant performance.

The better of the two karaoke experiences was on Sunday, when the three of us did Stripparoke. (For those unaware, it's just what it sounds like: you sing on stage while a very nice lady dances next to you topless.) The whole night was a sort of week-early "good-bye Joseph" party, which led to the lucky guy getting a dance, but that's not the story. The story is, as Joseph is wont to do, he chose a cathartic hard song to sing. In this case, it was Nine Inch Nails, "Closer." "I wanna fuck you like an animal," and all that. So the dancers, being clever good-natured ladies and all, improvised a surreal experience to match the song. This involved bathing the stage in solid red lights and smoke (admittedly, this may have been a KJ or tech decision) and all four dancers donning plastic animal masks and writhing against each other luridly on stage. An inflatable sheep was tossed about and variously humped or pressed against our singing friend. The entire experience was positively Kubrickian, and Pat and I both desperately wished we were allowed to take pictures inside Devil's Point. Not for pervy reasons; merely to capture this amazing spectacle! (Our friend-for-the-night, the dancer Piper, informed us that that particular stage play hadn't been performed before, and she was thrilled to have been a part of such cosmic alignment.) My words don't do it justice. It was pretty great.

So, two karaoke miracles back to back. Hard to top.

The above photo was chosen because it was taken earlier the same night as the Kubrickian Nightmare Dance and it conveys a weird "magic in the ordinary" feeling and because I have no photos of either night's amazement to share with you. Joseph has some of me giving my best to "Juke Joint Jezebel," which I hope to see someday. Unfortunately I didn't have the forethought to do the same for his more impressive, truly cathartic "A Drug Against War" rendition.

Anyway now it's 2am and I'm tired and maybe sober enough to lie down and try to sleep. Good night, internet.