County Clerk & Karaoke
January 31, 2001
Chocolate frozen yogurt and peanut butter nauseates you? Wednesday night some people in a Lexington bar are treated to the aural equivalent of peanut butter and lime sherbet when I sing the Queen classic homage to zaftig women "Fat Bottomed Girls" at A1A's karaoke night. My friend Allen tells me later that whenever I get to the chorus that two female co-workers who might be described as well endowed from the waist down squirm uncomfortably, wondering if I am singing about them, which Allen finds supremely amusing.
I'm not. When the guy who runs the karaoke machine can't find my first choice, "I Wanna Be Sedated," I quickly have to search for a substitute from the karaoke song book. On the same page as the Ramones is Queen and a song is chosen without anyone's buttocks, large or otherwise, in mind.
FBG is a fun song to begin with, even funnier when you picture Queen's openly gay lead singer Freddie Mercury belting out the lyrics, "Big big woman, you done made a big man of me!" Maybe the original title wasn't "Fat Bottomed GIRLS." Or the guitar player Brian May wrote it for him.
Singing karaoke is how my day ends. It begins, as most days do, by waking up.
I have to spend part of day in between at the County Clerk's office to renew my car's registration. I should have figured I wouldn't be the only procrastinating moron who waits until the last day of the month to do this but if I were that smart I would have thought to sing "Fat Bottomed Girls" on purpose to offend two co-workers. And I wouldn't have waited so late to renew my registration.
But sometimes someone gets a hold of my brain's brightness knob and turns it down to "dim."
So I'm shocked when I walk into the building that houses the County Clerk's office to see a line coming out of the cashier's office that goes the length of one hallway, around a corner and down another hallway.
"Omigosh," I gasp. A woman in line sees the suprise in my face and smiles. "It's not that bad," she says, "the line is moving pretty fast."
But I don't have to wait in line -- not yet. Because after I see the sign that reads, "NO PERSONAL CHECKS ACCEPTED UNLESS CERTIFIED BY YOUR BANK," I have to leave the building and walk the four blocks to the nearest Fifth Third Bank cash machine to get enough money to pay the piper. (That's really the name of my bank: Fifth Third Bank. They could have called it the Third Fifth but that's what you're drinking when you realize that you have no money left in the Fifth Third.)
Luckily it's not long after I've found the back of the line (only part way down the second hallway -- woo hoo!) that I realize I have left my proof of insurance card back in my car and I have to leave again to go get that.
It's almost exactly two o'clock when after three tries I'm finally in line. "It's like Disney World," the guy behind me says. Yeah, except that there are no signs reading: "The wait from this point is two hours." The woman in front of me goes to the soda machine and gets a Diet Pepsi. "Are you sure one's going to be enough?" I ask when she gets back. "You'll probably need a six pack."
But it's less than ten minutes before the line moves us to the soda machine and only five more before we're in the first hallway. "We're in the straightaway," I announce to no one in particular and probably even fewer who care. It turns out the woman who told me the line moved quickly was right. We get inside the actual room where the cashier windows are before my back has a chance to get sore from standing. When I get to my cashier I see that my trip to the cash machine was unnecessary because they take Visa and Mastercard.
(But not American Express -- now THAT'S the commercial Visa needs to do. "Come stand in line at the County Clerk's office. And bring your Visa card. Because they'll take half your afternoon but they won't take American Express.")
That's not totally accurate. This time it takes only 32 minutes to get through the line and out the door. Only ten more hours until karaoke!
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