Home > Pulpwood Queen Blog > Archives > 2007 > April > 02 > Entry
Karaoke! What Does Karaoke Mean?
Friday afternoon I decided that I would have a birthday party for my husband, the Jaybird. I, as usual, fly by the seat of my skirt as his birthday was that night. It kind of snuck up on me.
We were all in the shop trying to figure out to what to buy a man who always buys himself anything that he really wants. Cologne, no, won’t wear it. A tie, been done a kazillion times. More than half the things I have bought him through the years and still in the box, in a drawer, or hanging in the closet.
For Christmas, I finally thought I had found him something he really wanted, a Tractor Supply megajama tool chest on wheels. Christmas morning I pointed to the back of my car as the thing was so heavy I could not get it out to hide in the garage for Christmas morning. Somehow, he hauled it out of the back of my Inferno Red Pacifica and proceeded to put all his tools inside. He spent all morning organizing his tools in that chest. I haven’t seen him go near it since.
So for his 46th I went all out, we were taking him to Auntie Skinner’s Riverboat Club in Jefferson for a night of Karaoke. I gave Jay part of his birthday gift, some Navy blue Crocs RX. We have a new podiatrist in town that has opened a shoe store called Footsteps and these shoes leave all other shoes on the rack. They may not be as stunning as Manolo Blanick’s or Jimmy Chou’s but as far as comfort, sublime.
I dropped Jay off at the bar as I ran to the Hamburger Store to buy some pies. Who says you need a cake for a birthday! It’s always pie for Jay, as pie does not get any better than this. I picked up two three-berry with rhubarb and ran to Brookshire’s to get some Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream and some candles.
When I walked into Auntie Skinner’s Jay was sitting at the bar with Mary Hileman. Now Mary is one of our favorite Jeffersonians, her son was my husband’s roommate at the University of Texas in Austin. His name is Jay too. We then moved to a table that Robbie, who was tending bar, had set up for us. I noticed this guy getting the Karaoke all set up. He seemed very gung-ho dancing and bopping around as he set up all the equipment. We ordered dinner, as we knew everybody was all coming a different time. Ballgames were in full swing in Jefferson and most of our friends had kids in tournaments. They would be in after the games.
Just as our food was served here came 88-year-old Fred McKenzie, my fellow bookseller, then my sister Karen and her husband, Richard. Jay told everyone at the table, “You know you are over the hill when an 88 year old gives you at 46 years old an over the hill card. Auntie Bev arrived just as the Karaoke began. I have never seen such a wide variety of Karaoke singers, professional Karaoke singers. They each had their own CD’s and would demand, “Track 7, and skip the intro”. All ages of singers, all types of dress from a guy wearing all black with red roses embroidered on his shirt, kind of a Mexican looking Elvis. Then this other dude caught our eye in the whitest, tightest jeans we had ever seen. He had on a white fringed shirt, black knee high cowboy boots, and a black cowboy hat. We could not take our eyes off this guy. The Karaoke guy started the evening singing some head banger song then a montage of Generation X’ers singing everything from David Allen Coe’s “You Never Call Me by My Name” to Evanescence’s “Call Me When You’re Sober”. Then Elvis took the stage.
The Elvis guy kind of had the look and kind of had the sound but as the evening progressed, he seemed to get better. I mean he had the dance moves but I am afraid that everybody rather had their beer goggles on. When he sang “Suspicious Minds”, Jay hollered at all of us at the table that if we closed our eyes, we could almost imagine being at Graceland. I yelled “NOT” as we all burst in laughter.
More friends showed up and then the guy in the black and white cowboy outfit took the stage. We had all been waiting to see what kind of talent he would display. You could have heard a pin drop as he took the stage. Evidently, everybody else was as curious too. He mumbled something about not being much of a singer. I thought, hmmm, with all these professional Karaoke singers in the building, this was a strange way to begin his performance. What happened next was something nobody expected to happen or ever hear or see in their lifetime.
The opening strains of “In the Jungle” began and then in that high pitched tone he sang, “In the village, the sleepy village, the lion sleeps tonight”. The crowd was dumbfounded. My sister leaned in and said, “Man, those pants must be really tight!” We just lost it. We laughed until we cried. That song was the last song in the world I ever dreamed that guy would sing.
As I looked around at everybody laughing and having a great time, I looked at Jay. It wasn’t a fancy birthday party, or one that you could put down in the history books, but we were surrounded by the people we love and everybody was having a blast. Jay may have not got that perfect “present” but he was presently having a very good time.
Birthdays are special and I hope that Jay remembers this birthday as a really great one. Later on our daughter joined us and I remember feeling that ole parent pride as she sang Peggy Lee’s “Fever”. Our friend Jim Gallant even took the stage with a big ole stogie and sang “Mack the Knife”. After the pie was shared, the ice cream had melted, we gathered the gifts, and headed for the house.
We will be talking about the cowboy, the night, and Elvis for days to come. I still laugh out loud when the main Karaoke guy yelled, “Elvis has left the building.” These are the stories that we treasure, and share, and pass on. And isn’t it always like my favorite quote, “The world is made up of stories, not atoms.” So why don’t you comment and share a story with me. A story that made you laugh until you cried, something unusual that may have happened to you, or that favorite birthday moment. I look forward to hearing from you.
Tiara wearing and Book sharing,
Kathy L Patrick
Founder of the Pulpwood Queens Book Clubs
www.beautyandthebook.com www.pulpwoodqueen.com
P.S. For those of you that would like to know, karaoke means singing to prerecorded music. It’s a form of entertainment in which amateur singers sing popular songs accompanied by a prerecorded music from a machine that may also display the words on a video screen.
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