I said to myself, "This one's going in the blog."
In this professional newsgroup I belong to, people are always posting, "I'm coming to X city this week, anyone want to get together?" On Monday X city was Chicago and the poster was someone named P, who probably wouldn't be embarrassed to see this story here but I did promise. Now, P is more famous than your average newsgroup member. If you Google him you get 536 hits. That day he was featured on NPR for this mysterious credit card he was awarded for reasons nobody knows except the card issuer, which refuses to say. Like the "Da Vinci Code" of consumer credit. He gets a concierge who'll do or get anything he needs.
Anything. The concierge's name is Kevin.
The Chicago contingent of this newsgroup is pretty lame when it comes to raising a happy hour crowd, so I figured I'd be carrying the hostess torch alone. Luckily D., the only other happy hour stalwart, was in town.
We went to an Irish bar filled inexplicably with antique hats,
Garrett Ripley's, and learned some interesting things. For example:
- P funded his company by selling snarky Titanic t-shirts over the Internet.
- He once got 100 job offers by wearing a sign and handing out resumes in Times Square.
- He believes that "Sunglasses at Night" and "West End Girls" are the same song.
At some point I was going to leave because I hadn't written the presentation I was supposed to give the next day. Instead, these two girls from the next table, whom P had been chatting up when we arrived, talked us (or me, I guess, since nobody else was resisting) into going out to sing karaoke. Dinner had been beer and mixed drinks, so the five of us piled in a cab without realizing our destination was literally around the corner. I mean like 1 1/2 blocks away.
If you want to sing on a Tuesday night, I guess you've got to hit the
world's diviest karaoke bar. The bathroom has a moldy shower curtain in front of its one stall, for example. Hungry Hungry Hippos and Operation hang from the ceiling and the neon sign outside flickers.
It turned out that P had 19 years or something of classical vocal training, having attended the "Fame" school. He sang "Faith," "Bust a Move," "Livin' on a Prayer" and many other standards. D, meanwhile, has spent many years in a band, which I already knew, and he sang "Good Intentions" by Toad the Wet Sprocket and a song I didn't know. I refused to sing by myself, and once my companions heard me sing in a duet they stopped encouraging me to do so. (And let me just say, it was NOT my idea to sing "Sweet Home Alabama.")
My throat is still sore. I thought it was because of all the smoke and beer (P bought round after round with the Mysterious Black Card, until I had beers literally piled up on the table) but three days later I'm pretty sure it was the singing.
Nothing like presenting new product strategies when you look, sound, and probably smell like Janis Joplin on New Year's Day. I intentionally save makeup for these situations.
It will be a quiet weekend, though. I have class all day tomorrow, including a final exam, which means I have to get up even earlier than when I have paying work to do.
