Doug Jaeger is a buddy of mine that started up a company called LVHRD that organizes all sorts of different parties in New York. I received an email from him telling me that LVHRD's next upcoming event was going to be a karaoke competition between six masters of karaoke, and told me that I should go to the audition and try to secure a slot as one of the six competitors!
So I went to the try outs and a few days later I received an email from Chantal, one of the LVHRD organizers telling me that I'd been selected as a competitor. She explained that the competition was going to based on three rounds of karaoke, but that each competitor would only be allowed to select their first song - the songs for the second and third rounds of competition would be selected in a top-secret way that wouldn't be revealed until the night of the event! She then asked me to provide her with three songs to be considered for my first round of karaoke. So I responded with my three of my fave karaoke jams: Gloria by Laura Branigan, Oh, Darling!by The Beatles and You Give Love (a Bad Name) by Bon Jovi! I received the following email back from Chantal:
-----Original Message-----
From: Chantal Strauss [mailto:redacted]
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2006 12:48 PM
To: Brian Battjer
Subject: Re: Your song selections
Thanks, Brian.
I was told by a little bird that there might be a Gloria ban that
evening. I'll let you (and the little bird) know.
See you soon!
Chantal
A ban on Gloria? Apparently word had spread about my karaoke-competition SECRET WEAPON! So I wrote back and submitted another song as an alternate if they decided to enforce the Gloria ban! Ok, on to the night of the competition!
The competition was held in a huge banquet hall down in Chinatown called Grand Harmony Restaurant. Here's a shot of the audience around 10pm waiting for the karaoke to begin!
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And here's the panel of judges that were selected to judge the competition! (Not sure who the girl on the left is, but then it's) Andres Levin of Yerba Buena, Ricky Van Veen from CollegeHumor.com, Tim Harrington of Les Savy Fav and Rob Harvilla from the Village Voice.
(Photo by Leo Zacharias)
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I was the second competitor called up to the stage, and it was announced, much to my relief, that I'd be singing Gloria! Yay! (Thanks to Seth for manning my cam and snapping these pics!)
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For the first round of competition we were told that we'd be judged on two things: 1) How well we performed our song. 2) How well we incorporated the use of a "prop" that would be given to us halfway through our song! Sure enough, I was about halfway through Gloria and I was handed...
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karaoke
...a pair of balls! Hahahah. How appropriate!
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karaoke
In my defense, I first used to balls to show off my juggling skills, but the crowd wasn't impressed. It wasn't until I started awkwardly rolling them around on my crotch that the crowd lit up! (Photo by Leo Zacharias)
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Here's me post performance. (The party was open bar which means most of those beer bottles in the background were probably drank by me).
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beer
Here's the girl they called up to sing after me!
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Halfway through her song she was given a huge mess of tangled rope as her prop!
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karaoke
After the six competitors had each performed a song, the judges announced that only three of us would be moving on to round two! Here's my reaction to the news that I'd be chosen to move on, but that in Round Two song selections had to be chosen from a pre-selected 8-song list!
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seth miller
I was really nervous about the list (because nothing's worse than having to watch someone do karaoke when they don't know the song!), but I lucked out and managed to secure Bon Jovi's Livin' on a Prayer for my round two jam!
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karaoke
Which is one of my favorite karaoke songs of all time (although you gotta watch out for that full-step key change at the end. That shit's HIGH!).
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Out of all the Jovi repertoire, Livin on a Prayer is the one that has the most opportunity for crowd-interaction. You get to sing the part that goes "Whoa, we're halfway there..."
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...and then you can hold the mic out and catch your breath and let the crowd sing the "whoa-oh!" part that comes next! Hahah.
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karaoke
If, by the time I die, tombstones with embedded video screens are commonplace, someone please make sure that this photo makes it into the cemetery slideshow. Thanks. (Photo by Leo Zacharias)
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Here's me with the evening's emcee, Michelle Collins smiling because I'd just learned that I'd been picked as one of the evening's two finalists!
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michelle collins
And here's the board they had up on stage to how the competition played out.
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In between each of the rounds of competition, they had open karaoke where people could go up and sing. Here's Eric Gillin getting ready to bust a jam.
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Here's me with Jeff Newelt (aka - JAHFURRY), one of the other competitors (who in all fairness, should have been chosen over me for the finals).
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Claire was the other finalist! For the last round it was announced that our hands were going to be TAPED to one microphone and we'd be singing a duet voted on by the audience! Here's Claire and I getting our hands taped together. Hahaha.
(Photo by Leo Zacharias)
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The audience ended up selecting Summer Lovin' from the musical Grease. I didn't know the song well, but I knew it better than most of the other songs that were on the list! (There was stuff like Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong! If the audience had chosen one of those songs, I would've been effed!).
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Here's Claire and I in action sharing our tape-handed microphone.
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After some deliberation by the judges, it was announced that the winner of the LVHRD MCFGHT Karaoke Competition was....DRUMROLL........
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....Claire! What can I say? I gave it my best!
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After the competition was over, they had more karaoke! Here's Doug Jaeger (incognito in a wig) kicking some hair metal while Rina did her best slutty groupie dance moves right up in the front row!
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Posh Tony showed up at midnight (read: two hours late) and then tried to act all shocked and indignant that he'd missed the entire thing. Then after we realized that it was early and that we were already IN Chinatown, we did the only sensible thing...
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...gathered up a crew and walked over to Winnie's for MORE KARAOKE! First thing I did was make sure that everyone had a big, ol' shot of tequilla! Hahaha.
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Niki and Hot Karla at the bar post tequila. Then it was time to get...
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hot karla
I'm not sure what song he sang, but I do see the words "Will you let me come on" and "inside" up there on the screen in the background. A decidedly "Seth" choice.
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seth miller
karaoke
Somewhere along the way, Hot Karla found herself a Captain's hat.
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A little 1am, Dennis showed up with a crew of his own! He hit the stage with the quickness for what I'm guessing was probably Bon Jovi's Wanted Dead or Alive, his signature jam.
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Meanwhile, back at the booths, the mysterious red-shirted man was kicking it to Niki in full-effect (er, unless this was someone she already knew and I'm completely wrong).
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Here's a photo timestamped 29 seconds later: The captain's hat is missing and Hot Karla and Niki are up on stage.
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Sometimes I dance so hard I break my legs. Thankfully, Hot Karla was there to lend some support.
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Here's Dens playa-hating on red-shirts duet with Niki! Hahaha.
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HAHAHAHAHA! Here's a quick photo collage I made to reiterate just how expertly Grant managed to capture Posh Tony's likeness when he angrily scribbled this character of him a few months ago. (Keep in mind, Tony wasn't even around when Grant drew this!)
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Let me explain exactly what's happening in this photo. Niki's like "Here Seth, you sing again!" And Seth, who just watched Niki and Karla's duet is like "I think I'll sit this one out, why don't you two keep on singing?" Hahaha.
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Here's me around 2am, wearing a green purse and singing. (???)
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Last song of the night! I may not have won the competition, but I definitely went home feeling like a winner! (Cue sitcom audience applause and outro music from Growing Pains).
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If you're interested here's a really funny video of the karaoke competition that the LVHRD people just uploaded THIS WEEK! See? I'm not the only who takes more than a year to put stuff up on the web!
