The rest of the story

By request, the rest of the highlights of my lip-syncing career:

In 1989, Bengi, Coog, and I headed to Salisbury Beach in northern Massachusetts to create a lip-syncing music video in a studio along the boardwalk. I pretended to play the drums and sing backup to Skid Row’s “Youth Gone Wild” and Dokken’s “In My Dreams.”  The video was later shown at one of our parties and I didn’t hear the end of it for weeks.  I believe that Bengi is still in possession of the video, which frightens me to the core.

In 1990, Bengi, Coog, and I entered a lip-syncing contest at a dance club in Weir’s Beach, New Hampshire.  The club played exclusively dance music, but we decided to lip sync to Bon Jovi’s “Raise Your Hands.” The highlight of the performance came when I lifted Coog onto my shoulders and carried him around the dance floor as he attempted to lead a stunned, confused, and utterly non-participatory group of 18-22-year-olds in the chorus of the song.  We were clearly out of place, singing a song that was unlike anything the club had ever played before and loathed by our audience, but I nevertheless managed to meet a redhead named Nicole Blais at the end of the night, and after laughing at me for my performance, the two of us got together and casually dated for almost two years.

The only good thing to ever come from lip-syncing.

In 1993, I entered a lip-syncing contest in College Park, Maryland with two girls who I was living with while working in DC for the summer.  The place was actually a karaoke bar, but the television screen providing the lyrics to each song had stopped working a few nights prior, so the owner decided to shift the format of his establishment to lip-syncing until the screen could be replaced.  Kim, Rachel, and I lip-synced “Love Shack” and took second prize:

$100 that we promptly spent on drinks and food.

Two nights later we returned to lip sync Rock Lobster and were booed off the stage before reaching the second chorus.

This was the end of my lip-syncing career.