If you ever want to bring the house down on karaoke night, all you need is a rocking tune, an energetic performance and a hairy dude in a poodle skirt. Trust me, it works.

It was Halloween night in 2004 and a bunch of us ducked out of a party and headed to a bar on the corner to grab a few beers and show off our costumes. I can’t recall what all of us wearing, but I’m sure that our friend Camo made a dashing woman, complete with a pink poodle skirt, blonde wig and a low cut shirt that revealed chest hair whose equal could only be found on Burt Reynolds.

So there we were, all dressed up and drinking beers in the back of a dive bar. The seven of us were the only ones in the place wearing costumes, which meant there we were plenty of sideways looks as we walked into the place.

Now karaoke is rarely a good idea, but for some reason after a few pitchers of Livonia Lite, those bad ideas start seeming like genius. So of course, impaired judgment somehow managed to get us to put our names in, settle our tabs and head up on stage.

As the opening riffs of The Darkness’ I Believe in a Thing Called Love came blasting out of the speakers, a hundred poker-faced trashers just stared back at us. Matt was on lead, jumping up on tables, singing his lungs out while Jeff, Do and I did our best on backing vocals and Camo danced his ass off. It wasn’t long before the crowd was into it, singing and clapping along.

And just as quickly as it began, the song ended and we stood there in silence, staring back at the crowd. That’s when Do grabbed the mic and said “Thank you! You’ve been a great audience! Good night!” raised the mic over his head and dropped it and walked out the door. The rest of us had no idea what to do, so we followed him. The few friends we’d left standing there watching us perform said the house came down. People were cheering and clapping and a waitress even suggested hiring us to entertain on the weekends.

We’ve followed the performance up a couple times. Do has done it best, rocking a strange neighborhood bar in Chicago one night after a Cubs-Tigers game, playing air guitar with the mic stand and gyrating behind an unsuspecting girl who was headed across the bar in front of him. Suffice it to say, I Believe in a Thing Called Love has become a bit of a tradition amongst the L-Town crew. One I hope doesn’t end any time soon.

Years ago (and seeming another life) ago, I lived in Oklahoma. Fresh out of college, it was the best job I could find.

So I’m down there one night covering a town council meeting in the heart of the Little Dixie section of Oklahoma, a village whose sole claim to fame is that it was the site of the last surrender by Confederate forces at the end of the Civil War. Of course, they prefer to phrase it as the site of “the last Confederate holdouts in the war of Northern agression,” but I digress.

So I’m there, covering this meeting, during which the dirt-covered, overall-wearing head of the public works department lobbied to buy a new oil pump for the “village truck,” and the clerk had to stop several times while reviewing the previous months’ minutes because she couldn’t read her own handwriting out of the official village spiral notebook. So really, for small town Oklahoma, nothing out of the ordinary happened. Of course, I hadn’t yet talked to the mayor, and I had no idea that I was in for down home, ignorant, but at the same time warm welcome to the area.

So after standing there chatting with the guy for a little while, I hand him my business card. He takes one look at it and says “Rusty Shackleford, well that’s a polack name,” I just stand there for a second, not sure of what to say and he continues. “Where are you from, you don’t talk like us.”

“Detroit,” I reply.

“Dee-troit?” he asked. “Well shit, I used to work in a Packard plant during the war. I lived in Hamtramck, that’s how I knew you was a polack.”

Well, it’s hard to argue with that kind of logic.

I’ve got some rednecks in my family and those rednecks have even bigger rednecks for friends.

Several years ago, Little Brother, Cousin Andy and their friend the Hippie went to visit Cousin Andy’s family on Walton’s Mountain. Many members of my family were there, including my parents and other assorted aunts and cousins for the annual fall festival. It was a whole big thing and Little Brother, Cousin Andy and the Hippie decided to go along and raise some Hell.

They spent the better part of the weekend hanging with Cousin Andy’s brother, Cousin Skippy and their friend McV doing redneck things like taking a smashed up Ford Bronco with the top cut off (they had rolled it months before, so why the hell not?) two-tracking over the mountain. They drank a lot of beer and all came back to the D saying “Git ‘er done.” It was a very dark time in my family.

Anyway, after a particularly long night of drinking and carousing, the five got up early, drank some beers and went looking for trouble. Their great idea — well mostly McV and Cousin Skippy’s idea — was to get some guns and head out into the country to shoot some stuff. It was a well thought out plan which basically consisted of McV shouting at them, “Get the beer, get the guns and get your asses in the truck.”

Little Brother, Cousin Andy and the Hippie were a little concerned; apparently they hadn’t drank enough yet, so this didn’t sound like the greatest idea. In Detroit, this kind of plan usually involves shooting a gat out of the passenger window of an Impala and then pouring out some King Cobra for your dead homies, so it wasn’t the way they were used to spending their Saturday afternoon. But in spite of their better judgment, they all hopped in the truck and away they went.

The quickest way to get where ever it was that they were going was to head through downtown, right through the heart of the festival. Also, it would give them a chance to check out the action, after all, it’s not every day that the streets of downtown Walton’s Mountain are packed with tourists.

So as they’re rolled through downtown, McV, steering wheel in one hand, can of beer in the other, saw a pretty girl walking by and decided to lean across Little Brother (who was riding shotgun) and yell at her while honking the horn. Lost in all this leering was the fact that a police officer was directing traffic, standing in the middle of the upcoming intersection.

McV, more concerned with the pretty blonde walking by, rolled right through that intersection and damn near hit the cop, swerving just in time.

Little Brother said he wasn’t sure if it was the beer, the loaded guns or whatever else any of them may or may not have been carrying, but McV did what you’d expect a young man who had just nearly hit a cop while doing about 15 other illegal things would do; he ran.

Now this wasn’t any kind of O.J.-style police chase through the bustling streets of Walton’s Mountain, McV ran just long enough to toss the beer can into the bed of his truck and instruct the Hippie sit on top of the loaded rifle and Cousin Andy hold the .45. Once he’d hidden the evidence under two terrified out-of-towners, McV pulled the truck over.

So Little Brother was now in full freak out mode, convinced that he was going to pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

The cops, because they weren’t total morons, were on to them immediately. The guys reeked of beer and were sweating like R. Kelly at a Girl Scout meeting — it was obvious that they were up to something. One of the officers ran their IDs while the other had to listen to a very convincing story about how they they definitely hadn’t been drinking that morning and that the reek of booze and the hundred empty beer cans in the bed of the truck were from the night before.

Little Brother had a lot to think about in those few minutes. Would our parents walk by and see them? Would the cops search the car? He said that he was absolutely convinced that he was going to end up in jail that day, but all’s well that ends well, because for some reason the officers let them go.

Little Brother isn’t exactly sure what happened — maybe they got another call or maybe they just didn’t feel like doing all the paper work involved in booking a bunch of out-of-towners — whatever the case, they were let off with a very stern warning.

As they climbed back into vehicle, the officer handed them their IDs and said to McV “If I see you driving through town again today I will stop you and you will go to jail.” There was no need for a warning, Little Brother said, there was no way in Hell they were coming back to downtown Walton’s Mountain any time soon.

One of my roommates that year got mad at me and threw a Nintendo game — Ikari Warriors to be exact — at me.

Scary Gary was pretty well known on campus. He was easily recognizable, wearing a black hunting vest (the kind with all the pockets for ammo and knives and whatnot) over his worn out leather coat, he would run everywhere he went. One time I saw him trip, fall and roll all the way down a hill. It was horrifying, sad and hilarious. Kind of like watching a clown car lose control after slipping on a banana peel and crash into a pie stand.

Gary was a year older than me and the year I lived with him was his second year in that room. He was very attached to that room, so much so that he lived there for at least three more years afterward.

It didn’t take long for us to realize that Gary was, well, unique.

Of course, there was move-in day, when he screamed at me for stealing his bed.

You see, I moved in first and took the bed furthest away from the door and bathroom. Also, it had a brand-new mattress. It seems that was the bed Gary had the year before and he wanted it again. I’d known this guy for all of two minutes and he was already screaming at me.

Then there was the second day in the room, after we’d gotten all unpacked and I had my computer set up. We were all hanging out in the common room with a few girls from down the hall when Gary started looking up the nastiest porn he could find and insisting we look at it. After that night, I password protected the computer.

From then on, Gary would look his porn up on the computers in the lab, printing stacks of pictures out at a time. He’d come home from the library every night with a stack of paper in his hands and walk right by us into his bedroom without saying a word. Gary only owned one belt, one of the old Boy Scout belts with the shiny, metal buckle. It made a tremendous racket whenever he was taking it on or off. So as he marched by us to his room, you’d hear the door slam and then the sound of metal on metal as he unbuckled his belt.

The belt buckle served as an alarm, of sorts. He didn’t spend a whole lot of time with the rest of us out in the common room. If he was home, he’d be in his bedroom watching TV or doing Lord knows what else. On the first night we were there, Gary was in his bedroom and the rest of us were out talking about our classes. Suddenly, his bedroom door flew open and there he stood in a t-shirt and tighty-whities, bouncing excitedly like a small child who can’t wait to tell the latest knock-knock joke. He didn’t even get two words out before we shouted him down, telling him never to come out of that room again without pants on. From then on, the sound of his metal belt buckle was our warning that he was about to emerge.

Typically, it went something like this:

Roommate 1: Did you see the trailer for the new James Bond movie? It looks pretty sweet.

*clink, clank* Bedroom door flies open

Gary: This new James Bond movie is a ripoff of blah blah blah. Besides, they should have put insert obscure actress name here in it instead. She’s much hotter. She’s got naked pictures on the Internet.

Bedroom door slams behind Gary *clink clank*

Just as quickly as he’d emerge to say something, he’d disappear back into his bedroom and you’d hear the belt buckle again. It’s like he couldn’t stand to wear pants for more than a few seconds at a time.

About halfway through the year, Gary developed a crush on our neighbor.

Hillary was on the crew team, the kind of tough, no-nonsense girl that was intimidating to a lot of guys. She was a punk, which is how we met in the first place. She liked to hang out in our room and watch Wrestling with us and after a while, Gary started creeping out of his room (with pants on) whenever she was around. We knew it was on the night Hillary asked if any of us wanted to walk down to the cafeteria with her for an ice cream sundae and all us declined except for Gary.

Of course, Hillary decided that she didn’t want ice cream anymore. Instead, she decided to stay and flirt with Gary. Eventually, the conversation somehow turned to sex and bondage.

Gary: I’m not into that whole whips and chains shit.

Hillary: Bondage can be anything, Gary. Haven’t you ever held someone down during sex? That counts as bondage.

Gary: Nope. My love boat has never left dry dock.

It was honestly one of the funniest things I ever heard the kid say, but sadly, Hillary started dating some other guy and Gary was heading back to the computer lab.

While funny things were rare, Gary said his share of frightening things. As a matter of fact, there was a time at the beginning of the year when we were all kind of scared of him.

It all started when we noticed that he would spend hours drawing assault rifles that he saw in Soldier of Fortune magazine in his sketch book.

He liked to talk about guns and bombs and what he would do if he had them. It was frightening, to be sure, but you have to remember that this was before Virginia Tech, hell, it was even before Columbine. We hadn’t yet seen what people with the rhetoric Gary was spewing were capable of if pushed over the edge.

It was the week before his birthday and he was going on and on about what he hoped to get from his parents. He said he had a rifle for hunting deer at home and was hoping for a high-powered scope to top it off with.

“If I had that scope, I could sit on top of Hill Hall and pick people off coming out of Goddard,” he said.

For those unfamiliar with the EMU campus, Hill is a dorm tower on the back of campus and Goddard was an honors dorm on the front of campus. It also housed the student newspaper.

“Gary, my office is in Goddard,” I said.

“I know,” he replied, grinning.

That night, while he was at work, we ransacked his room.

When we found no guns, knives or anything else to indicate that he was actually motivated to act on his nonsense, we decided we should try to befriend him. Maybe, we thought, if we treated him like we treated each other, he wouldn’t kill us all in his sleep.

It worked, and he started to come out of his shell a little bit. That Thanksgiving he brought his Nintendo back from home for us all to play and even bought a game for each of us from FuncoLand’s Web site. My game, as you might have guessed, was Ikari Warriors. I played it a handful of times and then put it on the shelf after I remembered how freaking hard it was to beat. I guess this hurt Gary’s feelings, because he pegged me right in the forehead with the cartridge.

Gary was still strange, but he was more social second semester.

I felt for the guy, I still kind of do, because he probably has Asberger’s Syndrome but everybody just thought he was weird. That’s why, when he asked me to help with his final project for broadcast media class, I agreed.

Gary was a communications major, which I always found funny because he seemed so incapable of even the most basic, normal human interactions.

Everybody at the newspaper knew him because every semester he’d apply to be a columnist. His application, of course, was denied because his submissions were usually nothing more than rambling, hateful, thousand-word piles of grammar fail. Instead, he’d write letter after letter to the editor. Some got into the paper, most didn’t. I remember one particularly hilariously inappropriate letter where he went on for 1,200 words about why Hillary Clinton wasn’t fit to be a Senator. At the time, I believe, she was just starting to consider running for Moynihan’s seat in New York.

In any case, Gary went on and on spewing his hatred (much of which was regurgitated from Rush Limbaugh, I’m sure) for Hillary Clinton. The point that sealed his argument, he thought, was that no woman could excel as an authority because Captain Kathryn Janeway was an awful commander. Voyager sucked, Babylon 5 was awesome, therefore Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be a Senator.

We had to look up Voyager and Babylon 5 to realize what the hell he was talking about, but once we did, we spent the next 20 minutes laughing.

But I digress.

Gary’s final project for his broadcast class was to do a two-minute, on-camera interview. I don’t know who he’d asked before me, but he told me he’d bombed out with each and every one. Personally, I believe it would have been a far more interesting interview if he was the subject. Creepy? Yes. Frightening? Sure. Fascinating? Absolutely.

Nobody, it seemed, wanted to help him out. He was upset, I could see that he was scared. Without an interview subject, he said, he would fail the class.

So off I went to class with Gary. He wouldn’t tell me what he was going to ask me beforehand, but assured me the questions would be related to my work at the student newspaper.

The first minute of the interview went smooth. Gary asked about what I did at the paper and ultimately, why his columns were never selected to run in the paper.

Then, just as it seemed to be going along swimmingly, Gary seemed to run out of questions. He sputtered, flipped through his note cards a few times, then looked up at me.

“You’ve got some friends in a band?” he asked.

“Yes, I’ve got friends in a few bands,” I replied.

“The band I’m thinking of, it’s called PT’s Revenge. Can you tell me what the name means?” he asked.

“Well, the band is named after a friend of ours, whose nickname is Porno Tim,” I said flatly.

I waited for a follow-up question, but it never came. A huge smile spread across Gary’s face as he scanned the audience, hoping to spot someone who thought me uttering the word “porno” was as funny he did. You could have heard a pin drop in there.

There were no more questions after that, Gary just sat there smiling for what felt like hours. Really, it was more like 15 seconds. There we sat, sweating under the lights, straining like Atlas under the most uncomfortable silence I have ever felt.

Finally, as the professor signaled that Gary had just a few seconds left, Gary jumped up in his seat and looked straight into the camera.

“This has been I can’t remember what he called the segment with Gary T. blah blah blah. Remember, the stairway may go to heaven, but the elevator goes straight to Hell.”

Then, with a grin a game show host would be proud of, he gave a double-thumbs up, holding it until the professor said “and we’re out.”

A few days later we moved out of the dorm and our adventures with Gary were over. I saw him a few times around campus after that. Once, I saw him try to tackle a football player who he’d accused of stealing a burrito from Taco Bell — Gary took his job as a cashier there very seriously.

I know I was — and still can be — kind of jerk sometimes. I know I didn’t always treat people with the respect they deserved. I just hope that, in some small way, Gary wasn’t one of those people.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know he was a crazy bastard, but he’s had a rough go of it and I surely never wanted to make things worse for him. Also, I never wanted to end up on a list like the one Buscemi had at the end of Billy Madison.

I often wonder what happened to him. Did he ever graduate? Did he ever get a job? Did any girl ever let him see her naked, you know, for free?

I’ll probably never know, unless I see him on the news some day.

On weekends, you tend to like to do organized activities. In fact, you often organize them!

2′ish Sunday, Sept. 4
Come join in the Labor Day fun. We’ll be getting together around 2 p.m. to start the drinking, we’re hoping to have a softball game going soon thereafter. The real drinking and barbecuing and such begins about 5′ish.

There will be plenty of beer, food and froo-froo drinks for the ladies…and Corey.

Directions:
1. Take Merriman south to Cherry Hill
2. Turn right on Cherry Hill (West)
3. Take Cherry Hill west past Venoy, to S. Schuman. You’ll see a large brick building that houses a piss doctor (urologist) on the left side. S. Schuman is the street immediately after that.
4. Turn left on S. Schuman.
5. Follow S. Schuman to the fourth stop sign. You’ll see a school on the left side, keep going.
6. The Westland WSJP ranch is on the left side at the fourth stop sign (northeast corner).

Just in case, the address is 1495 S. Schuman. Give me a call if you get lost.

noonish Sunday, May 29
Come join in the labor day fun. We’ll be getting together between noon and 1 p.m. to start the drinking, we’re hoping to have a softball game going by 2 p.m. The real drinking and barbecuing and such begins about 5′ish.

So come drink our beer, eat our food and puke in our toilet. The party will be going late, so come by any time.

Directions:
1. Take Merriman south to Cherry Hill
2. Turn right on Cherry Hill (West)
3. Take Cherry Hill west past Venoy, to S. Schuman. You’ll see a large brick building that houses a piss doctor (urologist) on the left side. S. Schuman is the street immediately after that.
4. Turn left on S. Schuman.
5. Follow S. Schuman to the fourth stop sign. You’ll see a school on the left side, keep going.
6. The Shacktown estate is on the left side at the fourth stop sign (northeast corner).

Just in case, the address is 1495 S. Schuman. Give me a call if you get lost.