Ladies Night

Despite their history of awesome sing-alongs, I hadn't been to any of the Coolidge Corner Theater's midnight jams. The premise of these events is that you show up and the theater plays music videos with subtitles and the entire audience participates in karaoke. While that sounds like hell for karaoke's many detractors, it is in fact awesome. I can say this since I attended the "Ladies of the '80s" sing-along on Saturday night.

Amy P and I had a few drinks before heading over to the theater. I wore my usual '80s outfit of a black and white striped skirt with my black white and red Police t-shirt and Amy P worked some epic '80s crimped hair. It's kind of sad that I couldn't tell who was dressed up for the '80s theme or who just walked over in what they'd worn all day, but the crowd was good, even though most of the people there had barely been out of the womb in the '80s. We took our seats, and began the evening with Kim Wilde's "You Keep Me Hangin' On." Amy and I sang dramatically to each other, but remained seated. We also remained in our chairs during the completely hilarious video for Bananarama's "Venus." Back in the day, I thought those chicks were so cool, but watching it again last night showed that choreography budgets were much lower in the '80s. The three women basically hopped up and down and giggled.

"Get up," I said to Amy, "and give Joan Jett some respect." But Amy was already up when the opening chords of "I Love Rock'n'Roll" played. We threw rock horns and screamed at the top of our lungs. I think I found my new karaoke fall back. The Eurythmics came on, and I forgot how hot Annie Lennox is in that video. And why the hell is there a cow?

My favorite moment of the night was when "Love Is A Battlefield" came on. A large portion of the audience had made their way to the stage to dance on either side of the movie screen, including Amy and I. Through the whole video I was waiting for the part when Pat Benatar and her girls shake their shoulders at the johns. As if on cue, Amy and I headed for the opposite side of the stage as one woman on the other side headed for us. The entire theater went nuts as we strutted across the stage, and I realized how I miss being in front of an audience even if I was making an ass of myself. The night ended far too soon, but was closed out by the excellent "Like A Prayer" by Madonna when she was American. I was sad the show was over, but when I saw the previews for the Prince sing-along and the "Jiggy Crunk" rap sing-along with Vanilla Ice, Sir Mixalot, and a pre-Beyonce Jay-Z, I got very excited. I'll be there in July and August, probably pulling muscles to get down to Prince and Salt-N-Pepa.