I've been emailing with my aunt Cathy recently and she loves to send me some carazzyyyy stories. I can't even begin to explain the randomness of these emails but I think they're hysterical and interesting and if anyone in the world should have a blog it should be her. But in one of the most recent ones she explained to me how her sister Suzan--my other aunt- has been calling her everyday and humming a tune into the phone that neither of them can place. Cathy thinks it sounds like she's singing "Puttin' on the Ritz" but Suzan insists that it's not. A little background may be necessary for you to fully understand how OBSESSED with Broadway and the 1940s-60s my Aunt Suzan is. She owns a life size cutout of Fred Astaire and smokes long cigarettes out of filters, need I say more?
So anyway, Suzan has been singing Cathy this tune for weeks now insisting that it's not "Puttin' on the Ritz" and she needs to figure out what it is. Cathy could care less but she humors her anyway and emails me complaining about how she doesn't care what stupid song it is. Well today they finally figured it out. It's an old song called "Comes Once in a Lifetime" and she found a video of Judy Garland performing it, which you can see below. I can KIND of see where she was getting the "Puttin' on the Ritz" tune from but even thoughSuzan had the evidence in front of her she still believes that Judy must have taken some poetic license with the song because there's no way SHE could have been singing it wrong. It has to be Judy, the starlett with talent, who got it wrong.
After telling me the whole story Cathy brought up the question, "Have you ever noticed that people who can't sing on key are always avid music lovers? They aren't bad people and I would feel sorry for them if it weren't for the fact that none of them seem to care, and they all love to sing out loud, louder than everyone else."
Yes, aunt Cathy I have noticed this and to your disappointment you will learn that I AM one of those people. After a couple of drinks I can not resist taking over a private karaoke stage. People kindly tell me that I'm "not that bad" but I know the truth, I am HORRIBLE, but I force people to listen to me anyway because I just need to BELT out some Heart or Steely Dan at 4 am for sanity's sake.
This reminded me of one time when my family and I all went to New Hope for my grandmother's birthday. We went to a restaurant that had a piano bar in it. All the local queens would gather around nightly and sing show tunes and old standards. We were all hesitant about it at first but after a few drinks there was no tearing anyone away--especially my father, which is quite the site to see, picture a 50 year old man from NJ who loves football, stealing the mike, arms draped around two 30 year old gay guys, doing a Jimmy Hendrix air guitar rendition of "I left My Heart in San Francisco."
I thought I was being fairly reserved compared to everyone else, minding my own business, standing behind an older married couple with my mom, singing along but not trying to be the center of attention by any means. Then suddenly the woman who was part of the couple turned around in the middle of the song and looked at me, stuck her fingers in her ears and waved for me to keep it down because my voice was THAT PAINFUL to her! I laughed out of embarrassment and told my mom. She wanted to yell at the lady for being so rude, but the woman laughed as she told me to shut it up so I just moved to the other side of the piano so I wouldn't offend her ears any more. I feel bad for people who have to listen to me but I'm sorry, sometimes you just need to be Judy Garland--or in my case Liza Minnelli, present day.
I was trying to find the video of poor Liza singing NY, NY the day after 9/11 on the Rosie O'Donnell show, where she was wasted and forgot the lines. I thought that video would have summed up my singing abilities to a tee, but it SEEMS to have been pulled from the internet, hmm wonder why? Or maybe that was actually me and I only dreamed it was Liza. A Girl can dream can't she? So instead please enjoy this clip of Liza vs. Carol Channing, one of my faves.
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