Karaoke Idol

Some people are born to sing. Whitney, Mariah, Ashlee Simpson...you know who the masters are.

Unfortunately, I am not one of them.

This small fact didn't stop me last Wednesday evening when my cousin Fred decided it would be a good idea for us to get up and sing a duet on our Alaskan cruise. His logic was that it was late in the evening so few would see us perform, and with only one more full day of cruising ahead of us, we'd never see these people again.

The reality of the situation was that I was a wee bit tipsy at the time. My confidence was soaring courtesy of the consumption of several Gray Goose/tonics and I was game for the challenge.

We chose a classic, "Summer Nights," from the Grease Soundtrack. For added kicks we named ourselves "Sandy" and "Danny."

Okay, so maybe we were more than a bit tipsy at this point...

I really didn't think we'd sing since they were wrapping the show up, but to my dismay/horror, we were literally the next ones called up to the stage. We were not good, but we weren't awful either. Here is Fred and I performing our amazing rendition of "Summer Nights."



Oddly enough, we were entertaining and the audience seemed to like us. Plus, it gave my family the laugh of a lifetime. After our performance, Glenn the karaoke MC, asked me what my real name was and I told him and the audience it was Loren, which is my mother's name. You could hear her yell out "HEY!" over the crowd at that one.

We thought our work was done for the cruise, but two performances later, Glenn began announcing the judges picks for who sang the best that evening and who were moving on to the finals the following evening.

"Congratulations to Bob! Congratulations to Jennifer. And lastly, our two favorite people, Danny and Sandy!"

Excuse me? Did you just say Danny and Sandy?

Oh crap.

The next 24 hours were like getting punched in the stomach for me. When I woke up sober and realized what I had done, I wanted to throw myself overboard. Fred and I decided to change our song to a different Grease number. The song "You're the one that I want" is a markedly more difficult number than our previous bit. Tim could probably write his own blog called "the endless torture" for having to hear me practice all the Olivia Newton-John parts of the song, singing (screeching) along with my iPod.

All day, overhead announcements kept screaming "COME TO THE KARAOKE IDOL FINALS TONIGHT!" I kept screaming "Nooooooooooo!" and cringing with every reminder. We're they taunting me or something? I barely touched dinner the night of my performance (a remarkable feat considering how much food I was consuming by this point of the cruise). I kept trying to drink something to take the edge off, but it all tasted like vinegar. I was a wreck.

Our perky cruise activity director lent me her leather jacket so I could play the part of Sandy. Fred hammed it up with a t-shirt and slicked back hair. After a rushed run-through we realized we really sucked, and that we'd really have to work the image and personality side of things since we had little talent to rely on.

The "Some Enchanted Evening Lounge" was packed to capacity (of course) for Karaoke Idol. There were easily 350-400 in the room. My family kept telling me to imagine the audience naked, but with the average age of the cruise attendees being about 94, that was one image that wasn't going to help me one bit.

Finally it was our turn to perform. I'd like to tell you we were amazing, but we were far from it. Fred started off completely off-key. My first line was on note, but then I crashed and burned, forgot the lines and started laughing. Fred jumped in but sang the wrong part. To make it worse, the chorus is really hard to sing. You are supposed to sing at a higher pitch, but neither of us could do it.

In a nutshell it was the longest 2:47 minutes of my life.

At the very least we looked good. We kept dancing and smiling. What else can you do when you're making a total ass of yourself in front of 350 strangers and a bunch of evil family members with video cameras?



All 12 of the finalists were called back onto the stage while we waited for the judges to make their decisions. In the end, we all took home the gold for having the balls to get up there and make fools of ourselves. I'm sure this didn't make two of the finalists who could really sing feel real good to be on the same level of us.



The next day as we were waiting at the Port of Seattle for our luggage, at least five people came up and shook my hand, or rather, Sandy's hand for a job well done.

The video is out there, and I know it will fall into the wrong hands eventually. It is just a matter of time. Until then, I will take my gold medal and remember the day I came in first at Karaoke Idol.