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The Programming Committee organized a coffee house/open mic last night in the piano lounge on the sixth deck, right near one of the three bars on the ship. There's a pretty good amount of room dedicated to it, but it's really just an open space on the side of a main hallway, not its own proper room.
Anyway, the ship was full of AMAZINGLY TALENT PEOPLE so I'm going to talk about some of them now.
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Two of my friends from Penn State, Will and Brian, went up with two girls as the very first act and said they were going to do an interpretive dance of Hero by Enrique Iglacias (sorry if I spelled it wrong). So the song started, and all like 100 of us were watching intently. They were pretty funny, but even during the first verse I wasn't sure if they would be able to keep everyone's interest.
Then the chorus came along. And instead of interpretive dancing, they started to sing and dance "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" at the beat and in roughly the same key as the song. Everybody loved it, myself included. They had a couple dance moves planned for the next verse, but when the chorus came, they did Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes again. It was great, and a perfect first act. They got a ton of applause. They were listed as "Impact" on the sheet, which Drew said stands for Improptu Activities. I think they want to be like Improve Everywhere on the ship, which is cool, and should be fun to see if they keep it up.
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There was a girl with blonde hair and a flanel shirt who played guitar and sang. She had a really lightly brown colored guitar that looked like it had a Henna tattoo on it. It was really small, and I wondered if it was made for girls. She was a songwriter as well. She said that she wrote her first song - like most of her songs - about "a boy who didn't deserve it." She was a very good singer, and played some bluesy pop-form stuff. Three songs might have been a little much considering how many people were lined up, but she still got wild applause because she is crazily talented.
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My friend Max is tall, excitable, and has perfectly sculpted facial hair that I suspect he works on every day. He told me earlier that he would be doing some musical comedy with this guitarist onboard named Tolen, who I met the other day. He's taller than Max and pretty rail thin, and has hair that's roughly my style but black and a little bit shorter. He reminds me of another guy on the ship named Toby but that doesn't mean anything to you guys yet.
Anyway, Tolen's girlfriend is actually on the ship with us, and when they got up there she was sitting in the front row. They pretended to be taken aback by her beauty, and said, "Geez man, I think we're gonna have to change plans. We're going to have to serenade this girl. Just follow my lead, okay?" And then they went into a song from Flight of the Conchordes. The gist of the song was "You're the prettiest girl in the whole wide room." Other lines included saying that when she walks down a street, she must be in at least the top three, and that she could totally be a part-time model, but she'd probably have to have another job, too. They added in a line about being a Sears refridgerator model. It was really funny and well done. Max isn't an incredible singer, but he's enthusiastic and knows how to have a good time so no one cared at all. Tolen, on the other hand, is a very good singer, and people thought the contrast was really funny (myself included).
When that was done, Tolen played some songs of his own, just acoustic guitar and vocals. The first one was really really well done, and could definitely be on the radio if he would just get a record deal or whatever. He's definitely incredibly skilled. The second song was still good, but I think most of the point of it was for him to rock out some really cool guitar solos (which are less radio-appropriate).
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Emerson is from Thailand (his parents escaped China to go there) and I had dinner with him the other night. He speaks English pretty well but he's really enthusiastic about Chinese and holds dinners to help people learn and practice is (that's where I met him, actually). He organized the whole Coffee House thing.
He got up there with this guy Jay on piano, who plays all the time - probably excessively. He said when he opened it, with a strong accent: "Hey guys, I know that I am probably not the best singer in the world or very good, but I really miss my family and my friends and singing just makes me happy [with them] so I'm going to do it here too. Sorry if my voice is bad." Then Jay started playing My Heart Will Go On, and Emerson sang. I mean, he really wasn't a great singer, but no one cared the least bit. We applauded louder for him than almost anyone. He actually hit the notes pretty well after the key change, on the words "forever this way" and we all went crazy. But seriously, he went balls to the wall publicly doing something that even HE said he wasn't very good at. He definitely won a ton of respect for that.
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Emily is a pretty unique character. The first day she wore a shirt that said, written on the back in permanent marker, something to the effect of: "Hi! My name is Emily, I'm 21, I'm from Indiana but I go to school in Chicago, and I major in [her major]. I really love art, music, acting, and late-night talks, so come find me if you do too!" She's also seriously beautiful and incredibly nice to everyone. I knew that she played piano and for some reason I suspected she played guitar and sang too, but I don't remember if I knew for sure.
Anyway, she got up there and said she was going to play a song that a friend had shown to her when she was going through a hard time, on guitar and singing. I forget the name of the song, but it was very pretty and had good lyrics and I think I should ask her the name of it again sometime. She had a really nice voice, and great voice control too. I'm jealous of how high girls can go and how natural their falsetto sounds. Anyway, she only played one song because we were getting pretty late and quiet hours were starting soon, but she got crazy applause too. I actually talked to her later when she was reading alone on the side desk to ask her how she felt about her performance. She said she was glad that she could get up there and share something about herself with people, but that she was nervous as hell when she was up there. I told her she looked totally calm, which she did, and that I had been incredibly nervous too [especially since my voice cracked].
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There was a 16-year-old girl who did slam poetry. She didn't have them memorized so she read from a book and I could tell she was really nervous, but she was REALLY good, especially for someone her age. She read one about a boy, and one about finding religion in everyday objects instead of musty old places which I really enjoyed. I also dug that she could do it in front of a room of people 5-7 years older than her, and in front of her parents (!).
When she was done, she sat in a chair two people away from me, and I turned to her and basically said, "HOLY BALLS THAT WAS AMAZING." She just laughed and said thanks, and her dad (who was sitting right behind her) laughed with good humor and said "Apparently you don't go to church either?"
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I was toward the end of the show, and I was afraid people's patience was wearing thin, so I didn't want to do more than one song. Of course I did Mr. Brighteyes, because EVERYONE knows it to some extent. When I got up there I said hello, and that everyone before me had absolutely crushed my ego with their awesomeness (which was pretty true). Then I said that if you know the words to sing along, but don't mumble because that sounds dumb. Even before I was done playing the intro, people knew exactly what song it was, and started singing along right away with me on the first word.
It was really nice to have people sing along, and I think most people were pretty into it. I jazz it up a little bit and it's at the top of my vocal range, so I belt just a little, which makes it sound more impressive than it actually is. People actually applauded by the end of the first verse. When I was about to start the second verse, I paused the music for a second and said, "Okay, the lyrics repeat here, so if you didn't get them the first time around you have a second chance," and went right back into playing. Everybody kept singing along. At the second prechorus ("he takes off her dress now...") I just stopped playing to listen to everyone sing, and they kept right on going, which was great. My voice did crack a little bit on one of the high notes at the end, and I actually messed up the ending a little bit, but not beyond the point where I could claim It Was Just Artistic License Really. My leg was shaking like mad though. When I sat down, the 16-year-old's dad turned to me and said, "Holy balls!"
Peace out.
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