Fifty Schmifty, Gimme The Microphone!

It's pretty crap having a birthday 10 days out from Christmas. When I was little my Mum wouldn't put up the tree until after my birthday so that it could be kept separate from Christmas.
Now of course it's impossible to split them up so, what with that and the end of the school year thrown in, it's easier to just ignore the thing.

Of course, that wasn't going to happen this year. It was the dreaded 5-0.

I suggested to my Bestie and family that we hold off on any celebrations until January when people were more likely to be available and I could actually turn my attention to planning and organising the thing.

"But we have to do something!" insisted The Bestie and so I put on my totally self indulgent hat and said,
"I know. I would like to go to La Sing, early on in the night when there is no one there, and sing karaoke to my heart's desire!"
Done.

Now I need to explain La Sing. My Bestie described my second ever visit to this peculiar and rather seedy Adelaide night spot in her blog post several years ago. It is a small and slightly tatty room with badly painted Hollywood icons on the walls, a laser lightshow from Hell and outrageously over priced drinks: wine out of a cardboard box for $7.00 a glass, you know the kind of thing. But until about 10.30 at night it is basically empty!! You can sing what you like and there is no one to judge you or, more importantly, take up mike time. The Bestie's Beloved introduced us to this classic a few years ago and whilst I have only been there 3 times it remains a great self indulgence.

So that was my plan. Just The BA, The Bestie and her Beloved, Himself and the Bestie's parental body. We could be as silly as we liked and be outta there by 11pm when the crowds of drunk twenty somethings arrive to sing 'Fly Trash Hip Hop Ho ' songs.

Imagine my surprise when we walked in the door and a scattered group of faceless people through the laser lights began to sing Happy Birthday!

I had to peer pretty hard into the gloom to begin to see familiar faces. Worryingly, the first two I recognised were my Pastor and the Priest from my old Anglican church!!! Added to this were two very delightful but upright co-worker ladies from my Christian school and a good friend with his new wife whom I don't know very well. This was going to be interesting!!!!!!!


My lovely husband Best Friend and daughter had been working their joint bottoms off secretly emailing all my friends to get them to surprise me. And I had had no idea!! This wasn't quite the empty room for self indulgent karaoke singing I had imagined :-D But what the heck! Throwing caution to the wind I reasoned, 'This is my birthday...I'm an old fart now and if you can't make a fool of yourself on your 50th birthday, when can you?' Bestie's Beloved started the night off, as the suave MC he is, hauling me up to sing 'Mac the Knife ' with him and the flood gates were opened.

Pretty well everyone got into the spirirt of the thing. Another group of party girl work friends appeared after about an hour and yet another group shortly after that.

The last of us left at around 1.30am. It was a great night. After 10pm or so we had to compete with the rest of the public in the singing stakes but the DJ was very considerate and rotated the requests around tables rather than simply playing them as they arrived in a list so we didn't have to wait too long to get our mike on. The BA was stunning , singing song after song and gaining a worrying crowd of admirers from the General Crowd. Don't worry, Mother was close on hand!!

A big thank you to all my friends and family who came together to give me such a wonderfully self indulgent night. It was a fitting way to celebrate 50 years of 'Look At Me'.