Guilty Pleasures or Karaoke Night in the Gayborhood

The familiar sight of a multi-colored flag is flapping ever so slightly in the breeze generated mostly by Richmond traffic as I approach Decades, the divey neighborhood gay bar next door to My Main Gay’s apartment complex. He frequents the place for many reasons, but tonight, it is Wednesday, and that means: Karaoke.

Now as a rule, I avoid karaoke. As a professional musician, it is against my principles to sing bad music for free, but tonight Main’s little brother is in town and he wants to show him a nice relaxed time in The Gayborhood, and as usual, a good time for Main involves Yours Truly.

I am instantly struck by the cramped shoebox of a room that is the entire bar. Mirrored walls do little to open up the space and since it is still pretty early—nine-ish—there is not much of a crowd. The few patrons turn to size me up and I realize I have arrived before Main and to make matters worse I am quite possibly over dressed in my white linen skirt, layered tank tops and flip flops. Uh huh. I said overdressed.

Reserving judgment, I turn on my heels to wait for Main outside and eventually he, Little Bro, and another FriendBoy join me. We choose a spot at the bar just as a tall skinny man with a smallish head begins a painful rendition of something vaguely resembling country. The bartenders are bickering like siblings and I find out that there is a reason for this: they are. Charmingly Chipper Sis and Brooding Bearded Bro wearing a shirt that says “Vaginatarian” are painfully cute and I keep eavesdropping to hear if one of them will whine “I’m telling!” Their mother is the proud owner of this fine establishment and the whole operation is a family affair.

The friendly faces and warm introductions that come easily from the regulars quickly abate my snobbery and every brave soul that takes the mic seems to be genuinely enjoying him or herself, living in the moment, confidently doing in public what most of us self-conscious schlubbs only do in the sanctity of our own shower. I am inspired. But I still don’t really do karaoke…much. Suddenly, I hear my name called by the DJ and Main is smirking and looking falsely innocent. He has put my name along with his favorite Sarah Vaughn jazz tune, Whatever Lola Wants, on the lineup and I am now being paged to take my turn. My Scarlet O’Hara-esque eyebrow is struggling to free itself from my forehead as I attempt to maim him with eye-daggers while making my way to the microphone. He has a special request: I am to replace “Lola” with his name. It is something of an after hours tradition with us.

I shrug and surrender myself to the somewhat unwanted attention that comes with my karaoke performances. I bring all the sultry heat I have and mix that with a tiny bit of camp, and before I know it, there are cameras flashing and someone is recording me with their cell phone. All eyes are on me and the crowd is responding to each gesture and shoulder roll and the whole silly affair is rewarded with a bar full of applause and cheers when it is over. I bob a curtsy as humbly as I can and slink back to my barstool and beer, blushing fiercely and suddenly very thirsty.

I feel like it really isn’t fair to participate in karaoke nights since I sing for a living, and it is also a bit like asking your cousin’s new boyfriend with a PhD to look at this mole you have on your ass. I am not a skilled country or pop singer. That’s not my bag, baby, so unless the DJ has an extensive collection of Jazz standards in the keys I prefer, and/or a slew of obscure Broadway tunes, it is out of my box. Don’t get me wrong; it is fun beyond words to do a little Crystal Gayle or Madonna. I never get to do that stuff! But I always feel pressured to be perfect when I am singing outside the confines of a pro gig. Weird hang ups I suppose.

A return to Karaoke night the following week (how do I get myself in these situations?) proves to be even more absurdly fun and full of giggles. This week I was eerily sober all night and there were several gaggles of pretty-boy types out to have a good giggle. HA! Gaggles looking for giggles! I kill me! IT turns out that the lead geese all have decent voices and are pretty well versed in the cheesier Karaoke standards. On top of that, the bartender discovered that I am a pro musician and Main wanted me to share my Broadway chops with the crowd to mix it up a bit. Oy. So I find myself singing a little ditty from Oliver, the musical—more classical legit than belter Broadway, so its pretty high and requires a full voice. I have done this one other time in a similar bar, with a more redneckish clientele. You would think everyone would boo and hiss and throw bottles and coasters, but for some reason they eat it up.

I spent the rest of the night fielding questions about my occupation, humbly accepting compliments, and singing duets with a Lance Bass look-a-like (it was uncanny) including The Phantom of the Opera (his choice.) Yes, the one with the freakishly high note at the end. Well, it ain’t all that high for me, so it was kind of a gas to get to blow some minds with that one. It was like being a classical karaoke rock star; just what my expensive private school degree prepared me for. My lenders must be so proud. That must be why they are calling me everyday: to congratulate me on my personal success! But I digress…
The night was ceremoniously closed in true karaoke form with LB and me singing Summer Nights (again his choice.) It would have been better if he could have sung the harmony at the end, but hey, local gay bar karaoke night celebrities can’t be choosers. I think that’s what really keeps me grounded in reality.

All in all, a lovely couple of evenings, a great, relaxed neighborhood bar brimming with friendly folks, long necks are $3—which could be worse, and it is truly an authentic Montrose experience—at least, the low-key kind. If you are looking for something a bit more novel, well, that’s a different bar and another blog altogether.

real as life...head shots and retouching

Once again, I find myself in true awe of the lengths to which we all will go in order to appear beautiful. That said, I know I'm a pretty girl, basically. I have been blessed with many attributes of which I am proud and more importantly, many people in my life and family that have told me on a daily basis how beautiful I am. These same people would have thought me lovely and told me so even if I had looked like a female version of Quasimodo with eczema, but that is precisely WHY they are wonderful people. They loved me for my inner beauty first.

Now, all the heartwarming PC bull crap out of the way, I can get down to the shallow skin-deep issues that really matter.

As an artist/singer/actor type, you need a little something called a head shot. A photo of only your face/head (and perhaps shoulders) that accurately represents your current (operative word here) visage. It is traditionally in black and white, which I believe has more to do with old printing constraints than the whole "I am a blank canvas, paint me as you want me" BS they tell you in college audition classes, but whatever. Everyone looks better in black and white, and I am fine with that.

Now, anyone with half a brain can see while flipping through a playbill that many artists choose to keep their glamourfied-retouched-soft-focus-shots of 15 years ago as their professional image. I can't blame them for wishful thinking, but personally I find this repugnant. Your face and body is a big part of your product as a performer and the consumer (i.e. casting agents and directors) has a right to an accurate representation of what you ACTUALLY look like.

For example, THIS was my headshot from 2002-ish, taken by a friend (thanks ROB!) at a living room shoot.



This was taken with some homemade lighting and backdrops and a 35mm camera. I scanned the original 4x6 and used it to order 8x10s from Walgreens. It worked.

Now fast forward to 2007 and I felt it no longer looked the way I look, so I took my little point and shoot hand me down digital out on my porch and took a few hold-out-the-arm-and-click shots and THIS is what I came up with:



Despite the fact that my glasses are a teensy bit crooked (which drives me INSANE and I really don't want to talk about it), I felt that this was good enough to use after a little creative photoshopping on my part.

Now, before I show you what all I did, lets take a look at what photoshopping can REALLY do. Go to this retoucher's website and check out the before and afters. I will wait...

GlennFeronRetouching


OK. if you are like me, and fascinated by this stuff, then you may have noticed little infuriating things like the erasure of ab muscles (yes, MUSCLES) on women, to give them a flatter stomach, or the smoothing of veins in feet to give a more plastic look, or the highly common plumping and rounding of breasts in EVERY shot, including changing the neckline of a blouse to accommodate said faux boob job. This guy makes me out to be the amateur that I truly am, but hey, I just wanted to soften things a bit, not suggest that I am, in fact, Theater Barbie.

So, the first thing I did, was play with making a crazy colorwarp pic for my myspace page. This is completely irrelevant to this blog, but cool, so here it is:



Now, if I had liked the way this was going, I would have fixed the whites of my eyes so they didn't look purple and a few other things, but it started to bore me, so I moved on.

I went ahead and changed it to a black and white photo. Piece o' cake.



I also added the name, number and email down there. An essential part of any audition-related head shot. Now, in this smaller version on the web, you can't actually see the issues I had with this photo as well as you can when the entire GIMONGOUS file with a really high resolution is printed out in 8x10 format. Similar to one of those evil lighted magnifying mirrors old women use to spackle their faces, it reveals things that aren't even visible in real life. Typically, I destroy this sort of evidence that proves I am indeed human and flawed, but in the interest of protesting the unrealistic expectations our image industry has forced on us all, I will now swallow my pride and show you in ACTUAL VIEW what one small part of this photo looks like in 8x10 size.

Drumroll, please............



Ok, so maybe you STILL can't see the crap that irritates me, but I see every pore the size of a Crater Lake, and tiny blonde usually invisible hairs looking like a hormone problem. It was pretty obvious in the first prints I made. So, a few filters and a smudge tool or two later, I got this:



Again, I find in checking out the preview that you can't really tell what it is that was done, but my point is: GOOD! There should be an element of realism in head shots. I could have done soooooo much more to this photo to make it "better" but I figured I would probably look like this when I handed the audition panel the actual photo, and I for one did not want to endure the sniggers that would inevitably come with any plasticky over-retouched job I handed them. I mean, my lips are NOT glistening in the sun, My hair is a mess and probably will be in the audition. My glasses are crooked and to be honest, they are always crooked thanks to my habit of falling asleep in them.

In reviewing this post I find it is longer and more boring than I had expected, so I will just stop. My point is made with the link above. Perhaps I should have just posted that link and said WTF? I'm pretty sure that no matter what I say, no one will believe this is a real picture of me...right?

shark bait

*
Yesterday's afternoon gig at the Downtown Aquarium went...er...swimmingly.

I was thrilled to be singing with the oh-so-talented-and good-humored David Craig and Henry Darragh. Both were stand up guys about the whole fishy affair.

I personally had a blast with them, fins and all, despite the excessive amounts of dextromethorphan in my system (thus the oddly glazed-over look on my face). I THOUGHT I was smiling, I swear! A friend of mine who was idiot enough in his younger years to use DM as a recreational drug (seriously the stupidest thing I have ever heard of) explained to me that it is a dissociative hallucinogen...um...scary. Mainly I was jittery and paranoid and had a few moments of phasing out--Henry and David probably think I was just the typical spacey chick singer, sigh. But by golly I wasn't coughing!! I will in the future be more careful with my Delsym. Oy.

The mermaid dress was a tad scanty for my taste. Yes, it was pretty, yes, I get the whole aquatic theme for the employee appreciation cocktail party for the Aquarium, but personally, I felt it undermined the band's credibility. Call me a wet blanket. But the client was pleased and J&D were happy with the end result, so I really shouldn't be so "flip" about the whole thing! (OK, last fish-pun, I promise! Maybe...)

The band and I were a tad disturbed to see the live goldfish swimming in the table decorations (fish bowls filled with orchids). Especially when we realized they were serving fish as an entree as well...hmmm...a little morbid for my taste. David wondered how many expired decorative fish the Aquarium disposes of daily, excluding the poached/grilled/fried/baked varieties served in the restaurant, of course.

The rain was a bit of a nuisance as the valet drop off is a good hike from the actual door to the restaurant. This makes no sense to me whatsoever. I caught a brief glimpse of Henry getting thoroughly soaked as he ran to his car after the gig. Sorry man! Of course, it lent a sense of authenticity to the mer-theme, I looked like I had recently emerged from the watery depths upon arrival.

I know, I know: quit yapping and bring on the seashell brassiere...

The band and Mer-babe: (note the blue velvet draped dais...sheesh)



HA! I didn't notice until just now that they had draped Henry's keyboard with fish net! Wowser! I LOVE it!

And the Aquatic Hollywood Call Girl herself...



Bet you'd like to be a part of MY world....
or,
Bet you'd like a piece of that tail!
or,
Tartar sauce anyone?
or,
Would you like fries with that?
or,
Oh I could go on and on...there are fathoms of pun possibilities...Anyone want to continue the fun? Just keep away from calling Gwendolyn overdeveloped caviar...I'll take THAT personally!

*title credited to Alexis Swartley and her uber-wittiness.

comments

SO my little ticker says 101 people have visited my blog...but no one has anything interesting to say? No words of wisdom? No ridicule for the whole Marilyn thing? No thoughts on the whole "artist identity crisis?"

OK, OK. I know what it is...you are all waiting for the post-Wednesday gig post to commence with the merciless wave of taunting, right?

I just hope I get some pictures worthy of my colleague's rapier wit....