Catching Up

Hello again! Housecleaning time ...

Happy Birthday ...

... to my sainted mother. The whole White clan was able to meet up for the happy occasion last weekend, because we love my mother dearly. The fact that 3/5 of the White clan got a very fancy dinner without paying had nothing to do with it. It's just a huge bonus. I had the jerked lamb shank, because if there's one thing Jamaica is known for, it's jerked lamb. And also pot, but that wasn't on the menu, and I wouldn't have ordered it anyhow, even if it was jerked.

My mom has three boys. She always wanted a girl, and so as a good son, I feel it is my duty to be as girly as possible. It's why I took up baking. My secret plan was to make her a birthday cake, so when I left DC en route to Philadelphia, I packed all the ingredients and a cookbook in my car. Stopping in ?the shop where she works, I found out that a co-worker had already made her a cake pretty similar to what I was planning.

But no problem! Work cakes don't really count. But when I got to the house (ahead of my mom, who was still at work), there was ANOTHER cake sitting on the kitchen counter. My aunt apparently dropped it off the night before. But no problem! Surely she'd feel obligated to eat a cake made by her own son, plus the ingredients were spoiling in my car, so I went ahead and made that cake. We had some that night. And then, the next night at the restaurant, dinner included the fanciest and best cake of all. So my mom got FOUR birthday cakes.

If you get four cakes in two days, you're clearly doing something right. Keep up the great work, mom.

Jingle Bells

The last two years my older brother has very thoughtfully foisted his musical tastes upon me by making mix tapes of really strange holiday songs. Did you know there are disturbing number of songs by indie rockers which involve Santa having sex? There are! Because nothing sticks it to the man like the mental image of a 350-pound magical fatso cheating on his cherubic wife with an endless procession of desperate housewives. I look for a lot of things in a Christmas song, but a tune can't really capture the reason for the season unless it has the prevailing theme of women trading sexual favors for gifts. Joyeux Noel!

Karaoke Challenge: Round Seven

When you set out to sing eight karaoke songs in a year, it seems impossible ... but then, a mere 11 months and one week later, you're staring at the finish line. It's a true testament to the strength and resilience of the human spirt. Yea, the karaoke challenge between myself and the lovely Allyson Jaffe is almost over. (Click through if you want all the backstory.) The latest news:

We knocked off song number six during a vacation cruise in October. Allyson sang something by The Beatles (her choice) and then mercifully let me get away with another Stevie Wonder song, "A Place in the Sun." Nothing too exciting.

Song seven, though ... on Sunday night we hit up the Galaxy Hut in Arlington. Allyson, choosing her own poison, went with "Kiss," by Prince. It turned out to be the Tom Jones version. No one threw their underwear, and this apparently took her off her game, because it was maybe the worst version of "Kiss" ever performed. I tell you this not to denigrate Allyson, but to praise her: most people would have walked off halfway through a rendition that bad, fearing prosecution by a war crimes tribunal. But she stuck with it. Way to be.

Allyson also had the luxury of choosing my seventh song, which was the Taylor Dayne classic "With Every Beat of My Heart." It's a touching, upbeat number which explores the magnificence of love, and while Allyson undoubtedly chose it in the hopes that I would humiliate myself, I inspired the crowd with my beautiful and throaty voice, and also by telling them that my grandfather had requested the song on his deathbed. Lying is completely OK in the service of showbusiness.

We stuck around a bit afterward, with Allyson actually turning in a pretty good rendition of "Don't You Want Me Baby," and me once again changing people's lives by singing "Rich Girl" by Hall and Oates and "Photograph" by Weezer. I think if push comes to shove, we can safely say we hit our targets for the year, but we might try to get an "official" eighth song in before 2009 arrives. I'll keep you posted.

Tags: karaoke