A Very Karaoke Christmas

Christmas at the Humungus family compound is a reliably mellow experience.  Like a sweetly glazed creme brule, it provides occasion enough to gather around for good conversation, and it is best savored slowly.  In my youth, Christmas was conducted with reckless abandon.  It was as though we were an army in the field during The Great War, closing our eyes, but never truly sleeping.  A bugle would blow reveille at 0600 to signal that Santa had stolen the march on us in the night. Everybody came running to assembly, followed by screaming children ripping and thrashing and gorging on 5-pound bags of gummy bears (I was a chubster for a reason.)

Nowadays it is a much more adult-paced holiday.  We are able to skip the early mornings and mountains of wrapping paper, as I am joined by three of my five siblings in riding the wasteland childless and alone.  It has been a pleasant metamorphosis of traditions in a way.  We are able to focus more on enjoying our time together, less on playing with whatever new toys we may have scored.

My brother, Clark Griswold, carries most of the Family Man water for us siblings, what with his amazing wife and four kids.  He's making a pretty good case to be our parents' favorite (if only they didn't love me so, so much.)

Family photos to aspire to

This year, after the adults had opened our gifts at the parents' place, we went over to Griswold's to catch the tail-end of his kids rampaging through their piles of goodies.  I must say, as peaceful as the adult affair is, I probably get as much enjoyment from watching the excitement of kids opening their new stuff as I do from opening my own.  But even after the paper stopped flying and the squealing ceased, the best gift had yet to be revealed.

Unbeknownst to anyone, Griswold has become a karaoke dynamo.  So great has his enthusiasm for his art grown that Mrs. Griswold bought him a karaoke system all his own, and his friends bought him a powered mic bedazzled with rhinestones.  When Griswold suggested we all fire up the machine that night, I'll admit I was a little reluctant to get into character for the jam.  I've never done karaoke in a living room, and certainly never in front of my family.  But about three songs into it, I was singing along the whole way.  I decided to jump in for a duet with Griswold (dual mics, y'all!) of Steve Miller's The Joker, the lyrics of which are innocent enough.  Unless you're singing it in front of your mother.  We were rolling along, singing passionately of being jokers, smokers, and midnight tokers, getting our lovin' on the run.   When we sang of how much we "really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree,"  mother asked quizzically, "What does that mean?"  And we all laughed, because really, who wants to explain what that means to their mother?

Surprisingly, everybody took a turn at the mic except for Slut Rock and dad, although we did get Slut Rock singing along with a rowdy rendition of Whitesnake, and brought the whole family in with some Neil Diamond.  There were a few songs that I've sung a thousand times in my car, but never realized how really nasty they are until I was singing in front of my mom and dad and saw the lyrics written on the screen.  Gold Digger and Baby Got Back, for example.  And let's not forget the horror of watching video of myself perform Like a Virgin.  I won't say it was embarrassing, because there's no room for self-awareness in karaoke.  You have to give it your all.  If you were any good, you'd be making millions singing on the MTV, or wherever you go to watch music videos these days.  Being bad is half the fun of karaoke.  We can all take the piss out of each other individually, but collectively, our crappy singing makes us better.  And really, isn't that what family time is all about?