\jeff{krimmel}

Karaoke at Duke’s

I am in Texas for the wedding of a very good friend of mine, and Saturday night everyone gathered for the rehearsal dinner. I have a close group of seven friends or so dating back from junior high school, and we’re pretty much all groomsmen in this particular wedding, with the one getting married.

After the rehearsal dinner, we all went to Duke’s Tavern for some drinking and shuffleboard playing. It turns out that Saturday night was one of their many karaoke nights, and of course we all had to participate. First, a backstory. In junior high school some time, we were hanging out over at Bobby’s place, and we found a cassette tape of the hits of the 60’s or some such thing. One of the songs was The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City”. We spent the better part of one evening playing through that song, over and over, on the cassette tape trying to learn the lyrics and time a perfect lip sync…until the cassette tape finally warped and died. We were more or less successful with the lip syncing, but this was on the order of ten years ago.

Sure enough, last night, one of the songs in the list was “Summer in the City”, so six of us guys walked up to the stage and belted it out, beers in hands. Tone deaf would be a polite way to describe how most of us sing, but it’s karaoke, so who cares. We also totally missed the first two or three lines of the song, which again made for classic karaoke. If they had played the cassette tape on Bobby’s boombox, though, we would have nailed it.

Bobby and I finished the night at Duke’s by saving face at the shuffleboard table, winning a game after a humiliating 15-14 defeat (during which game at one point we were up 14-1). Bobby, Elizabeth, and I then drove back to their apartment near downtown, and Bobby and I watched a taped copy of the Texas vs. Louisiana-Lafayette football game. We (Texas) won 60-3, which was doubly sweet being that Oklahoma lost 17-10…to Texas Christian University…at home. Ouch. That one’s gonna sting. Hook ‘em!