Back to Reality (part three of a series)
[Editor's Note: Diane started this entry yesterday (Wednesday) and got caught up with doing the work she's actually paid to do, so she didn't finish until today (Thursday)]
Let me just say that I miss the sun and would appreciate if she would come back. It’s been rainy, foggy, and otherwise miserable around here since Sunday night, and I’m sick of it. I mean, I wake up early enough to have barely any sun around anyway – in fact, weather.com tells me that actual sunrise isn’t until I’m almost ready to leave the house. But I’m getting nothing at all now, because what little sunlight that might be edging over the horizon is getting covered by rolling fog and thick clouds. Bring on the snow – at least that reflects the light around!
So, there we were, sitting around the living room, full to the brim on turkey, potatoes, squash, gravy, and pie. It was time.
I ran upstairs to the “blue room” and retrieved Mike’s backpack. I unloaded parts as Mike tried to figure out where to plug in the wires. Some people had been warned, but others were wondering what was going on. I’ll tell you what was going on! Karaoke Revolution, that’s what!
At Laura and Fred‘s house-haunting party, Sarah had brought this fabulous game, and I got severely addicted. Well, Mike is an awesome boyfriend, and he got me the game and the necessary microphones for my birthday. I unlocked all kinds of characters and songs in the week between my birthday and Thanksgiving, with some help from Mike and Kate. I probably sang and annoyed my neighbors for like 15 hours. I love the game, okay?
The game started out as a disaster. I put the game on random song selection, and poor Kate ended up getting her dad as her duet partner. The first song that came up for the duo was “Headstrong,” which neither one had heard before. Kate tried valiantly to match the notes while her dad just screamed words as soon as they appeared on the screen. Players of Karaoke Revolution should know what that means – they were booed off the stage within seconds. I managed to screw up the settings for the next pair, and while trying to fix it, I ended up skipping them. So, since we were in true disaster mode, we decided to start over, and this time we allowed people to pick their own songs.
We played many rounds and switched partners a few times. The final configuration brought us down to three teams: Kate and her mom, Mike and his aunt, and me and Mike’s dad. Yep, I got stuck with the worst… uh… I hesitate to even call him a singer… screamer in the bunch. I suppose it was supposed to just be fair, because I’m good at music. The only song we got a good score on was “Love Shack,” and I had to admit that that was cheating – the male part sings maybe three notes in the whole song. Unfortunately, Mike’s dad only knows two.
Meanwhile, Kate and her mom swept the floor with the rest of us. With one exception, they got platinum record after platinum record. Their voices are so similar and so pretty together – it’s almost like their related. :-D The one exception, by the way, was “California Dreamin’” – a true duet. Kate couldn’t sing low enough for her half and her mom couldn’t sing high enough for her part… they got booed off the stage. Amazingly, though, their other score (we did two song rounds) was high enough to still beat the other two teams. Spectacular.
Mike and his aunt did a pretty good job too, especially when they figured out that they should sing cross gendered. Mike was Olivia Newton-John and his aunt was John Travolta. They put up a great score on “You’re the One that I Want.” The Sonny and Cher song “I Got You Babe” was just meant for them (they kept their own genders for that one). Then, to rub salt in a wound, they chose “California Dreamin’” and managed a solid gold record. Kate and her mom were not impressed.
To top off the night, we decided to do a one round competition where we all sang the same song. Being Red Sox fans all, we decided on “Sweet Caroline.” Kate and her mom once gain beat us all, but the real impressive feat came from Mike’s aunt. She was the only one of us that could match every sing note of that song in its original octave. She is Neil Diamond.
It was getting a bit late, and with so much shopping to do the next day (well, for us girls anyway – the dumb boys went to the movies), we decided to crash. It was even colder in the “blue room” that night, since I had stupidly closed the door to keep the various pets out. My nose may has well have been an ice cube. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t sleep so great. But I was up at 8:00 again the next morning. (See! We aren’t that crazy…)