Next Up: Lurene

I'm in Newport News this weekend. You can tell this is a place that is compensating for something because it uses the word "new" in its name not once but twice, and this place doth protest too much. I have easily traveled 30 years back in time. I don't even need my anti-wrinkle face wash here - the time differential alone has my skin firm and buoyant.

I'm with Jess. We're visiting our friend Val, who works for the shipyard in Norfolk and bought her first house here. It's been an amazing adventure, mostly because it is so deliciously backwards. I forget sometimes that Virginia is in the south. Not the deep south, but the SUV-centric, fried seafood, strip-mall south - the kind of place where local men look at a girl funny when she holds the door for them ("well, equal rights I guess" they mumble reluctantly). It's a short drive down from Alexandria, and we arrived in time to grab some dinner at the "Crab Shack," a seafood restaurant situated right at the foot of the James River Bridge. We rode in Val's Mercedes coupe - I wasn't even reclined, I was curled in the fetal position in the back seat - and I had a solid fish sandwich and overlooked the water and it was a great start to a weekend of new.

The key lime pie was good, which in my opinion is a prerequisite for any restaurant which purports to sell seafood. I only ever tried to make a key lime pie once, when I lived in Florida, and its legendary horribleness follows me to this day.

After dinner, we dropped the car off back at Val's house, used the jaws of life to extract my ginormous self from the back seat, and walked to the "Hilton Country Club." Please remove any images of plaid pants, golf clubs, or anyone who refrains from smoking OUT of your mind, because this country club was a dive bar for the ages.

And they had karaoke. The fact that I didn't run tells you two things: 1) I really wanted to be drunk, and 2) I knew a good story was brewing. I was not disappointed on either count.

Everyone was smoking. Not a single person in there was without a cigarette in their dry, crackled fingers. These people weren't screwing around with Marlboro "Light" anything - all were smoking straight Marlboro's, and a haze of burning benzene hung so heavily in the air that I could blow second-hand smoke rings. We opened a tab, grabbed a couple of beers, and then Jess, like a meteor pulled inexorably toward a planet, found the karaoke books.

A little history: I hate karaoke. In fact I once described karaoke thus:

Curious buttf*cking George I hate karaoke. I know this makes me an almost unbearably wet blanket in 19% of social situations, but the only things I hate more than karaoke are brussel sprouts and child molesters. Karaoke. Killmearaoke. Put-the-microphone-in-a-boat-and-implode-it-araoke. Not only are we going to make bad music, but we're going to make it LOUDLY, insert it directly in your brain past your shriveling cilia, and wedge it right between your will to live and your need to destroy.

Yeah. Not a fan.

But for two minutes and 40 seconds, I actually liked it. Jess and Val tortured the bar with a seven-minute rendition of Meatloaf's "I'd Do Anything for You," and afterwards Jessie insisted I sing something. She pulled out her cute eyes. She threatened bodily harm. And I don't know whether or not it was the smoke cutting off circulation to my brain or the Miller Chill which I was downing like Gatorade after a dodgeball game, but I heard myself say, "I only know 'Blue Christmas' by Elvis." If you know anything about Jessie, all she needs is an inch and she'll have you dancing naked in front of your Board of Directors within three minutes. She ran to the DJ, signed my name up, I screamed at her, and then spent twenty nerve-wracked minutes listening to Mindi, Mike, Beau, and, of course, Lurene sing their tone-deaf guts out .

The DJ had screens set up with the words, and at the bottom like a CNN ticker names would read off "Now Singing: Mindi. Up next: Lurene." Well, pretty soon it was "Up Next: Martin," and I was freaking out. You have to understand, music is my second language. Playing the piano is an incredibly intimate experience for me. I work really, really hard to play pieces in a way that reaches people, that excites them, that presents me in the best, most talented light. But my fingers do the singing - I do not. The Martin does not sing. Or if he does, it's in the shower surrounded by adoring shampoo bottles, and usually I'm making up the songs ("Martin's in the sho-ow-ower, scrubbing up like a st-ah-orm..." etc...) I don't know pop songs. I don't sing pop songs. But I do do a pretty wicked impersonation of Elvis singing "Blue Christmas." I did it once for Jess as a joke years ago, and she loved it and couldn't stop laughing (especially with the "uh-hun, uh-hun, un-hun...")

So there I was, standing up in front of a bar full of Newport Newsians, my throat thick with smoke, my hand shaking on the microphone, watching the screen read off, "I'll have a Blue Christmas without you..." and three minutes later realizing that I had sung it, that it wasn't horrible, and that the world hadn't collapsed.

...and that no one but me cared if it was any good, because they were all busy waiting to see their name "Up Next."

I wondered how much of my life's energy I've wasted worrying about the outcomes of things that only mattered to me. If any politician could get elected as easily as I've elected the voices in my head, he'd have statues as far the roads could go.

We woke up late today after the first good night's sleep in a while, and caught some lunch at the "Twin Star Diner," complete with bright green ceiling and rusted chrome napkin fixtures. Like I said, I'm 30 years behind you right now. I'm impressed I've been able to tap into ARPANET to send this post to you in the future. Later in the day we caught "Sweeney Todd" at the Cinema Cafe - I haven't had my love of movie theaters shaken that hard in a long time. There were no texting-teenie-boppers and no pregnant trashy girls, but the projector had a bad shake that shook the entire two-hour film. After about the 17th shaky throat-slitting I was like, "Why am I sitting here watching this crummy image when I could watch it at home with pristine picture, the ability to pause, and no scary people?" It's not the first time I've thought it, but I was still an advocate for film-watching being a social experience. There is something special about experiencing a movie with a bunch of strangers. It's like going on an adventure or something - you all become participants in this great unknown story, combined by your common goal of following this story. I usually really like that, and I don't know whether it's because I'm older or because I hate karaoke, but my desire to experience a movie with a bunch of people who don't know how to be in a theater watching a moving being shown by a crummy projector.... I don't know, it's just different. I'd rather invite friends over and have "release parties" and watch a movie on a big-screen TV with friends.

Anyways, I'm rambling. Then again, I'm in Newport News, where everything new is old again. And it's nice. It's balancing. It's a reminder that not everyone is so caught up with all that crap I'm caught up with. And I did get up and sing like the King. That felt pretty good... you know, for something I hate.

Your,
Martin