Leppotone

Karaoke Massage

Dear Leppotone Family,

Y'all are more than cordially invited to the Leppotone Karaoke Show 2006. Again, the fabulous Leppotone Karaoke Overdrive will take the stage at nine PM and commence to tax your patience with spontaneous and non-spontaneous assortments of sounds divided by interjections of surprise and silence.

The greasy rocking chair that keeps us all glued to the weathered porch of complacency will be kicked away in a moment of Costneriffic oblivion. If you aren''t "down" with that sort of thing, then you should stay home, because at this point, we quite frankly want nothing to do with you.

If you are at all familiar with what the hell we''re putting down, you should make with the requests in a most "pronto" fashion. I am an old and busy man, and I've had more than my share of pink mint juleps this evening (more on that later). If you are not acquainted with all of this prancing tootling, then read on, my sweet parfait.

In the fall of 1990, The Sleestacks ate a second Thanksgiving dinner on the Saturday after Thanksgiving at "our" house in Ann Arbor. We ate a great deal of the spoils of the season, leftover from the feasts of our various families. We also drank a great deal of fancy red wine. This was followed by a brief nude protest downtown, where we implored the coffee-drinking dolts (no offense) off Ann Arbor to "Free Willie Nelson." For a completely unknown reason, Mr. Nelson's problems with the IRS were at the center of our drunken noodles. Every year after that, The Sleestacks held a post-Thanksgiving party. It eventually became a Leppotone Thanksgiving Party, and it grew to include all of our favorite people and their thundering dance moves, beautiful vomiting and infidelity. The last of those parties included so many people that no one was able to eat or talk or play the banjo or dance or get naked. So, we decided to move the party to a public venue, because you know how amenable neighborhood bars are to eating, talking, playing the banjo, dancing and getting naked.

Since laughter is the best medicine, we decided that a live karaoke band would be the best salve for our drunken-banjo-dancing-infidelity wounds. The Karaoke show is our once-a-year free party, and everyone is invited, even assholes. The rules are simple. You request a song and the LKO plays it.

1. Request the song in advance and be willing to sing it.
2. Request the song in advance and be willing to listen to it.
3. Request the song during the show and be willing to sing it.
4. Request the song during the show and be willing to fight anyone who disagrees with your appraisal of the Styx canon.

We think Drago may have given us brain damage. Like Mr. Balboa, our boxing days are over; however, we offer up the LKO as our own up-and-coming Tommy Gunn. These guys could be sucking down liquor at any old brass-n-fern piano bar in North America. Instead they choose here and now and you and me. Bless them and the beauty that shines forth from them and bathes us all in the unforgiving glow of an early Irish Spring.

Here's a map to the venue:

Kraftbrau Map

Here's a recipe for a Pink Mint Julep

1 kaboodle of reasonable bourbon
1 squishful of mint
1 spint of powdered sugar
2 ml. of generic Pepto-Bismol

Muddle the mint and the sugar with one drop of Kentucky tap water. Drop in enough ice to fill your glass. Add the pink. Fill with bourbon. Swish the glass around. Swish your fine ass around. Drink.

Does anyone remember how to make a Klugman? No? Well here's the recipe:

Bourbon
Some other kind of whiskey
Vermouth

Fill glass with ice from bottom of the Harvey's ice machine. Pick up bourbon with right hand, a different whiskey with the left. Pour both into glass. Add a smidge of vermouth. Stir with finger. Enjoy.

Thanks to Mr. Chris Monsma for remembering the recipe. Apparently his brain was not as damaged as mine was by the experience.

Your partner in truss repair,

Col. D.K."Wade" Leppo