My Family Is Fucking Weird, Vol. I

Main Idea: Lip-Sync Routines

Supporting Details: The other night, my dad and I sat around drinking gin (he with Tom Collins mix and I with tonic) while listening to Dwight Yoakam's cover of Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds" on repeat. We listened so long and drank so much that my dad finally -- and very happily-- suggested we work on a "routine" to perform at our upcoming family reunion. He even demonstrated what that routine might look like, leaping into the living room from behind the dining room wall and crooning into his alcoholic-beverage-microphone as the singing began. He then left my brother approximately five messages in the hopes of discussing the routine and the rehearsal thereof. My brother's only response when he finally called back: "I'm not sure that's an Elvis song. I think it's just a Dwight Yoakam song."

Because he, like the rest of us, is used to this shit. It's a given. Any gathering of more than two of my family members, given enough time and enough alcohol, will result in a lip-sync routine. Actually, it's probably not lip-syncing, it's probably just regular old singing. It's just that the music's so loud by that point that it's hard to tell.

Some members of the family have a standard routine to a specific song. My sister does "Tiny Dancer." She's not above being a backup singer in someone else's routine, but "Tiny Dancer" is hers and hers alone.



Other members of the family, namely my dad, will get down to just about any song they know.



The rest of us will only get in on the lip-sync action given enough alcohol and the right song.



Lip-syncing is fun. Just ask the neighbors.

I don't know what other families do on Christmas, but I distinctly remember one Christmas that my mom looked out the window and noticed our neighbors across the street laughing their asses off at my sister and I singing and dancing around to Madonna's "Like a Prayer." It was on repeat. And we were in college.

Sure, it's a little odd. But if you'd spent your childhood watching your dad twirl around the kitchen singing "Leader of the Pack" and "Poison Ivy" into utensils while clearing the table and washing the dishes, you might have developed a penchant for lip-sync routines too.