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?

If At First You Don't Succeed, Maybe Failure Is More Your Style

Track and Field events are a big snooze for me.  The folks at NBC pay over a billion dollars to broadcast the summer Olympics every four years, and try to get me excited about these finely-tuned machines, running fast in straight lines and occasionally jumping over things.  And every four years I respond with a deep, heartfelt yawn.    

Call me when you have to run down your dinner from behind

Once in a while, a video surfaces that brings a little more excitement to TnF and gets me to watch.  These types of videos usually involve less-finely tuned machines struggling to accomplish the same fetes as their Olympic superiors.  These are the true amateurs, the ones that train by playing Wii Track n' Field.

If running fast in a straight line is the upper limit of your athletic ability, let's throw in some obstacles to make things interesting.  We'll call them 'hurdles.'  Give it a try.  We'll tape it.  That way you can see what you did wrong and improve, and the internet can have some fun watching you fail.

I've been sitting on this video for a while, partly because it's kinda dickish to be laughing at these girls' struggles.  I'm sure many of you have already seen it.  For those who haven't, enjoy:

But failure is often funnier in slow motion.  With a soundtrack.  The soundtrack to this one is Radiohead's Creep, so there are a few naughty words. But it's sung by a choir, so it's beautiful, right?  Just try to tell me this isn't a thing of beauty:

I guess there's two sides to this coin.  It's kind of sweet to see her getting up every time she tanks it.  Sure, it can be used as a "never give up" motivational thing.  That doesn't mean it's not funny.  This was like a hybrid of track and baseball.  Someone should have told these two girls that you don't have to slide into the base after every hurdle.  

Maybe the IOC could consider making Baseball Track into an Olympic sport. (Heck, they let ribbon gymnastics in!)  Then I might watch.  But once you add the competitive factor and the coaches and the PEDs, it sorta loses its charm.  There's something more appealing, something special, about the unintentional stumbling and sliding of true amateurs.      

The One About Flamethrowers and Career Suicide

You ever see one of those loose threads hanging from the tapestry of one of your cherished childhood memories?  The image woven so beautifully in time, but you see that thread and you just can't resist giving it a tug, only to have the whole thing unravel before your eyes?  I've done this so many times, I should know better than to go fooling with the things I loved when I was a kid, because it will ruin them.  Rarely are things as good as you remember.  More often, they're total crap.

Condor Man.  Duck Hunt.  Pitfall.  Cloak and Dagger.  Any Schwarzenegger movie not directed by Jim Cameron.

So just leave 'em alone, right?  Leave them to their remembered beauty.

Tonight was Thunderbird's Global Gala.  This is the party that the school throws for each graduating class, and it is generally a can't miss event.  I didn't leave the dance floor for three hours straight.  On the ride home, all danced out and feeling mellow, I was sitting on the bus next to an Indian classmate of mine who is a huge classic rock fan.  We were discussing great wind-down music for the end of an awesome evening when Billy Squier's "Lonely is the Night" came on the radio.  Billy Squier was huge back in the early 80's, with three albums going platinum from '81-'84.  Thanks in large part to my older brother Slut Rock, I had grown up listening to Squier.  My Indian friend had never heard of him.  So I promised to send him some YouTube links to educate him.  In trolling for songs to send, I stumbled upon what may be the single worst video of all time:  Rock Me Tonight.

It was Squier's most popular single ever based on the pop charts.  Yet some credit the release of the song's video version with the cratering of his career.  As I watched in gape-mouthed horror, I had little doubt they were right.  If Freddy Mercury, Elton John, and George Michael were to write a song and direct the video, they couldn't have conceived of a gayer vision than this.  Which is fine, if your name is Freddy Mercury, Elton John, or George Michael.  This is your milieu.  But Billy was/is a purely hetero rock and roller.  He's married to a German soccer player, for crying out loud.  You'd never guess it from the way this video plays out.

[Fade in to a shirtless Billy lying on a bed, wrapped in satin sheets.  He stands up and pulls on his lace-up jeans and ties the laces.  Slips into Jennifer Beal's ripped t-shirt from Flashdance.  Begins limp-wristed snapping, then skips stage-left to dance in front of the mirror.  Falls to the floor and army crawls back stage-right, but sexy-like.  Gets up, sugar-foots his way around the room, and rips his blouse (slo-mo.)]

Just as you think the ripped shirt will bring some machismo back to his rock persona, he grabs a pink tank top and continues his sugar-footing.  Then, as you feel the hope of rescue slipping out of sight, Billy spies his guitar, and goes off the shred with his friends, and you think they'll save him from this awful video.  But those are foolish thoughts.  Nothing can save this video.  Come to think of it, this is sort of like the gay version of Thriller, when Michael Jackson and his girlfriend are surrounded by the zombies and she clings tight to him for protection, and you think she's safe.  But when she turns around she sees that Michael is a zombie, too.

You think, "Yeah, Billy escaped the satin sheets and dancing mirror!  Now his friends will take him safely back to Rocklandia."  But then surprise!  They're in on it.  And what was a Richard Simmons clip morphs into a full-fledged Wham! video.  The only way it could have been gayer is if Billy had spontaneously combusted in an explosion of glitter at the end.

Watch the whole thing if you can.  I had to look away by about the three-minute mark.  I'm not the type to stand around roasting marshmallows on the smoldering coals of my memories.  I'll be sure to keep my Squier intake in audio form from now on.