Homeboy likes to rock

Quick addendum to Friday's post about Little Umi, the most incredibly lifelike [fake] baby monkey ever: I got an envelope from my mother in the mail on Saturday. Inside was a short note stapled to the Little Umi advertisement! I am my mother's son. The post-script at the bottom of her note said, "It's collector-quality silicone!"

Maybe I should finally tell Mom I have a blog and invite her to join us. We would all benefit, I'm sure, but I'd have to tone down the foul language and godlessness. So I probably won't. (Actually, the real reason is because Courtney doesn't want my parents reading her blog. Fair enough.)

But back to rocking. It turns out I missed my calling as Billy Idol's understudy. Oh, I'm not saying I'm a particularly good singer, but I sure as shit enjoy it.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Commenter Julie invited us to go to an Atlanta Thrashers game Saturday night, something neither the Lady nor I were particularly excited about, our only other experience with professional hockey (the Knoxville Ice Bears of the Southern Professional Hockey League) being decidedly underwhelming aside from the wiener dog races held between periods (and not when the Zamboni was on the ice, although that would have made it the greatest sporting event of all time. Picture it: A hundred tiny over-fed dachshunds, their little legs spinning on the slippery surface, getting run down and hoovered up in bunches by the menacing machine. It'd be a bloodbath. Hey, Knoxville's municipal arena isn't called the Coliseum for nothing, after all.)

But the Thrashers game was actually a lot of fun, it turned out. The venue didn't patronize us with an overabundance of crappy music and unnecessary sound effects, our seats were cushioned, and the game was well-played and exciting, with the home team coming back from a 3-1 deficit in the third period for the win. Go hockey.

Oh, but the rocking; I'm getting there, I promise.

First, the tabling. That's right: tabling. I've talked much about the fabled sport here on this blog and even provided (alleged) photographic evidence, but, until Saturday night, none of my readers (Courtney included) had ever witnessed the feat. Returning to Julie's house after the game, Jacob immediately pointed out the sturdy-looking kitchen table and the challenge was extended. Marty McFly and I have much in common, not the least of which are the ability to travel through time and the unwillingness to turn down a challenge (although in my case there is no need to utter the magic word, "Chicken?"), so we pulled away the chairs and I began stretching and fortifying myself with beer as quickly as I could.

It's just like riding a bike. The last time I made a table my bitch was three or four years ago, but the movement came back to me after just one false start, although I ran out of steam fairly fast. No one else in the room wanted anything to do with it, which was disappointing, but we made up for it with the rocking.

So on to the rocking, finally. Julie and her husband Matt have Guitar Hero with the full band set-up. And we had a full band's worth of hard-rocking people. One thing led to another and, before you know it, we were rocking hard. I deferred the vocals to Jacob for the first set of songs, which he promptly rocked, allowing me to get over my bashfulness by his example. Why I should be bashful in this particular group of friends that go back to college, I have no idea, but I was soon rocking with abandon, completely trashing my vocal chords to the shrieking lyrical stylings of Bon Jovi, the aforementioned Idol, and yes, even Pat Benatar.

In short, it was a dream come true. I tend to wail like a banshee when listening to music by myself, but I've almost never unleashed my vocal talents on anyone else's ears. Thanks to everyone there for allowing me to hog the microphone. Let me know when we're getting the band back together and I'll start warming up the pipes.