Anecdote of the Day: Open Mic Night

It's open mic night at our friendly neighborhood coffee shop, and the hubby and I have settled in for an evening of blogging (me) and studying the complex relationship between windowpanes and dovetail joints (him). It's a terrific place. It's an old renovated barn, all whitewashed and echo-y, and they knocked out a few walls to put in these big picture windows. Which was a good idea in theory, but the big picture windows look right out at the county jail, complete with the barbed wire and tiny windows and chain-link fences.

But the coffee is good and not too expensive, and they have big tables and comfy chairs, and they make a mean soy chai latte and you don't walk out smelling like stale coffee. So we come here a lot. We especially like open mic night, which is a showcase of the weirdest talent ever to crawl out from its mother's basement (where, I presume, it's been holed up for the past three years, writing bad poetry and strumming tuneless chords on a crappy guitar).

So far we've been graced by the following performances:

• A very old man with long purple hair and a beard down to there got up with a banjo and started singing "When I'm Sixty-Four." Except, since sixty-four had evidently come and gone long ago, our fearless performer changed the lyrics to "When I'm Eighty-Four." I liked this guy a lot.
• A much younger man with dyed black hair and way-too-tight black jeans stood up with a guitar and strummed at random for a while. The hubby, who knows a thing or two about guitars, tried in vain to figure out what key he was attempting and gave up. And then the guy started singing a song that went on for six entire minutes. The song went like this: Marijuana doesn't kill you / So why is it illegal / Cigarettes kill you / So they should be illegal / Why is it illeeeeeeeegal? He just kept repeating this over and over and over. He finished to thunderous applause. I suspect that most of the people were clapping because he'd finally stopped. I know that's why I was clapping, at least.
• The emcee is young and pretty and evidently unable to pronounce the name of the coffee shop. She keeps saying it wrong and then tittering as she corrects it. The baristas are muttering amongst themselves and shooting her dark looks.
• An Irish cover band composed of angry teenagers is playing "Johnny Tar" and "Other Songs That Sound Like 'Johnny Tar' in a Different Key." They're not half bad, actually. I've seen Gaelic Storm perform this song twice, and both times they played it like they were half-asleep. That's the problem with popular songs, I guess. Around the ten-thousandth time you play it you start to go on autopilot.
• A woman with tight curly hair got up to sing, but first she had to tell us all about the guy who broke her heart and inspired her to write the song. It was a long, painful story. It was a long, painful song. 

It's been a good showing tonight, at least. And I can't help but admire the guts these people have to sing in public. I, naturally, have the guts to sing in public, but my repertoire consists of "Colors of the Wind" and "Part of Your World" and the first verse of "A Whole New World," and I think this crowd wants something a little more angsty and emo. If only Disney had some angsty emo songs. Dude, I could be the queen of open mic night.