October 7, 1999

Karaoke at Drinks by Mary Dawn

I tried to convince my friends, but to no avail. It seems no matter how cool a twist can be, nothing will bring people out to see Karaoke. I mean, come on, Meghan and Marianne from the alternative-rock band White Cotton Panties and Rob and Steve from the ska band 5Head sing karaoke? How could you miss that? So I went to Drinks by Mary Dawn (535 S. Clinton) anyway and checked it out. The evening was, let's just say, pretty odd.

First, the bar was doing a guest bartender thing with some Rochester rugby team. Apparently this caused more glass breakage than normal. The guys also tried to raffle off a bottle of Fighting Cock 103 proof...uhh...bourbon (I think) that one of the other guys had bought. When the raffle was over, one of the players took a swig of it then poured the rest into this giant snifter as big as your head and passed it around.

I spent a while trying to decide who lives and who dies by shouting "Chug! Chug! Chug!" whenever anyone took a sip. Some people tried. These are the people I think are dangerous and must be stopped. :-)

Jen, Meghan, and Marianne are Sugar Bear's Angels.

Rob snapped a quick pic of Meghan early on.

Once karaoke started, I moved to the other "room" near that and started talking to Meghan, Marianne, and Rob. They kept getting up to rattle off another song, and since they actually practice singing they were pretty good. Steve joined us a little later in the evening.

At every break, Rob and/or Steve and anyone else would jump up and grab a mic while Sugar Bear swapped laserdiscs and do an impromptu rap touting his many virtues.

I got the impression that this group was (1) very creative, (2) had their own set of common media they draw from for amusement (duh) and (3) are all total hams.

Karaoke ended around last call and I hung around at their table and they kept up with this constant barrage of character voices, movie quotes, and of course any kind of visual humor. I tried a lot but just couldn't keep up. I'll need to work on my Sinatra impression for next week.

Gumby tripod attacks Rob.

Jen was ready to pahmp [clap] you ahp.

Rob concentrates hard to make his hand person walk.

Ok, now what the hell is with the hand people/hand animal thing. There seemed to be a couple things going on here.

First, there was the clumsy skater where someone (usually Rob) would make a hand person skater who would skate around then just fall over on its side--I assume this was just a repeat of a past joke.

Next, there was a hand animal thing where the animal would stroll over to one of the objects on the table and either sniff it or do some other animal-like behavior with it.

Finally (and this I was really lost with) was when they'd do some kind of hand animal and sniff at say someone's arm and then jump up and run over the top of them and off into the distance. Whoever was "attacked" would squeal and shake like they were really spooked--Meghan was particularly good at this.

There's a word for people who do this kind of thing...it's...uhh...oh yeah: FREAK! :-)

Meghan's hand animal takes a peek at some of Rob's sketches.

Rob's hand animal checks out the ashtray.

Jen daintily sips her pitcher.

Later on, there's not much left.

I didn't figure out how Jen fits into this group. I mean, the other four are in bands...I don't know if Jen is or not. Nonetheless, she carrys around a full pitcher and sips away on it with a straw. Despite what people think, you can't drink as fast through a straw, and this seemed to come into play. I wasn't exactly counting, but I think she worked on one pitcher through the whole night.

Alright, no more narrative really. I just wanted highlight a few of the other pictures. I really like this one, and of course, I didn't take it--Rob did. He just plopped the camera down on the table with the Gumby tripod, lined things up and snapped this picture. Bastard.

I didn't fix the red-eye problem in any of the pictures, and I thought it was really funny that Meghan's hair matches Marianne's retinas. You can't really see it in the thumbnail, but it's clear in the larger version (click it, really).