Monday, Monday

Ah, I went away this weekend, and it was kind of nice. Sometimes I feel very much like I must leave this city immediately, and I was feeling that way last week, so it was good. It wasn't a relaxing weekend per say, but I did enjoy the change in scenery.

I was looking forward especially to being in the US of A because I thought there might be some kind of noticeable excitement about Obama. Not where we were. Where we were, I was afraid to even say the word "Obama" for fear I would be shot. Weekends like this remind me just how different Canada and the United States really are. God, as much as I would have liked to be American last Tuesday to experience the election, I am so happy and thankful to be Canadian.

You see, my aunt has a place in Great Valley, New York. It's in the hills, and the locals well, they come from the hills. You know the type of people I am talking about. It's weird, because Great Valley is right by Ellicotville, which is this cute, posh little town. Although, I suppose most of the people that live there are actually rich Canadians or Americans.

Anyhoo. Beside my Aunt's place is a pub. The pub is about the size of a large living room. It smells like grease, there is a pool table, a dart board, and somebody would have to pay me a large sum of money to use the washroom there. This pub is literally a stone's throw away from my Aunt's place. Saturday night at the pub was karaoke night, which we practiced for all weekend leading up to the big night. We being me, and 9 other women. So Saturday night, we stroll over. The place is hopping, because well, it's the only place to go really. We all got a beer, and then proceeded to pull our chairs into a nice little semi circle facing the singing "stage". We grabbed a song book and began to ponder over which song we would sing first.

Before we picked a song, this girl I never met before, really nice, but straight from the 80s, came over to me and what like, "do you want to sing Friends in Low Places? Get all your girls, we'll sing it". "Okay!" I say. Really, Friends in Low Places was THE most appropriate song ever to sing, especially with this random girl. After we all went up and sang it, and did a hell of a job by the way, we all proceeded to go back to our semi circle. This is when this girl comes over to me and strikes up a conversation about Garth Brooks. I like me some Garth, who doesn't, but I can only talk about him for so long. The conversation went like this:

Her: "I love Garth!!"
Me: "Me too. Who doesn't really?"
Her: "But my favourite song is Unanswered Prayers"
Me:" "Yes (trying to remember how that song goes, or any other Garth Brooks song for that matter), that's a good one! I like Standing Outside the Fire"
Her: "oh yeah, that's one's awesome. I also like "some Garth Brooks song"
Me: "mmmmmhmmm" This is the point where I pretty much end the conversation by staring at her blankly. She goes to pick another song from the book.

While all this is going on, we sporadically get up and sing "Shoop Shoop Song" "Stop in the Name of Love", etc and so forth. At one point, I was sitting in my chair, when this bearded guy with the hugest gap in his tooth wanders over to me. He kind of puts out his hand, like he wanted a high five, so I slapped his hand. Then, he was like "Helllllo", and petted my hair for a good while. It should be noted that his pregnant girlfriend was over by the bar. It should also be noted that everybody in this bar knew each other. Also, two of the patrons of the bar are, a biker looking guy, and his slutty stripper girlfriend, who had the nastiest longest hair ever, which she kept flipping over her shoulders and in front of her eyes, like she was the sexiest thing on earth. She wasn't.

So this biker dude, who we find out is part Indian, gets up to sing. He's like "I don't want any music or words, I'm going to sing my own song." So he sings a song from an Indian pow-wow (I"m guessing). This song is interspersed with english lyrics such as "I want to walk with you in the moonlight". The song lasted forever. We clapped like maniacs when he was done, because, what else are you going to do? While this guy was singing, Slutty Hair came over and started dancing all up on him. And he continued to sing.

Perhaps half and hour passes.

He gets up to sing again. It sounded like the same song. After this song, the applause was slightly less. We got up to dance to Crocodile Rock and Mony, Mony. At some point during one of these songs, my aunt decided to run her fingers through Slutty's hair, because the girl kept flinging it, and it would hit us. The look of horror on my face when she did it was probably uncalled for, but EW!

So we all sit back down in our semi circle. Biker and Slutty start dancing in the middle. All of a sudden, Slutty does a high kick, which lands approximately 1 inch from the face one of the ladies I was with. We were all kind of like "what the hell is happening?" Then all of a sudden, one of the locals come over and was like "She's going to kick your ass!" We were all utterly confused, because...what?" Then the local lady is like "I'll be a distraction, so you guys can leave". So she takes up the entire dance floor (which really wasn't hard), and starts flailing her legs and arms, while we all got the hell out of dodge.

We left before we got to sing Dancing Queen, and it was sad, but it beats getting your ass kicked by a Slutty Stripper, her Biker Boyfriend, and their band of hill people. We tried to figure out what set her off, but nobody did anything worthy of a beat down. There was the hair run through...buuut she didn't throw the kick at my aunt, and she didn't even seem to notice when it happened. We concluded that perhaps her biker boyfriend was eyeing up S, Slutty didn't like that, and then tried to kick her.

It was so freaking weird. And although I have never encountered that anywhere else in the States, and lord knows there are crazy people in Canada too, it still made me mighty glad I was Canadian.

All in all, it was a pretty great weekend.