X-man's First Karaoke

X-man received a karaoke machine from his aunt and uncle in California. I have never seen him quite as serious as when I got out the camera and started filming. So I promised him I'd keep that footage to myself.

What he learned is that song selection is key... and that he gets a little nervous when he is watched or filmed. Not a surprise. I sung the best when I turned around and faced the bookcase Jim Morrison style -- even in our living room.

On another note, the karaoke machine is nice because it has a button you can push where it smooths out the lyrics from your iPod, so if you know the song, or you've printed out the lyrics, you're singing just to the music. But if you need a little help, you can sing along to the words just on a microphone. MacTroll is already thinking of getting a headphone splitter, so you can listen to the words in headphones, but they wouldn't play as you sang to the "crowd," for those of us who freak out and have minds that go blank even if we've sung the song a million times in the car.

Either way, we spent several hours yesterday playing American Idol. X-man has never seen American Idol, so I'm not sure how he knew to go and make up number cards to evaluate the singers as judges. But that's what we did. My first song I got a 10 from MacTroll and a 0 from X-man. Now I know which one is my Paula...

When we were done, the boys had Chinese food for dinner and then played with the castle that X-man's grandparents gave him.

Then I went off to see the Descendants by myself. Where I feel I got duped by a trailer and supposed "Oscar buzz" again. Sigh. It wasn't hilarious. It wasn't funny at all. I was anticipating quirky like Juno. The whole thing was sad, sad, sad, sad.

I much preferred seeing the Muppets.