It was the D of the V, y'all

My two favorite holidays are Halloween and Thanksgiving. One holiday that requires costumes and candy and one in which you stuff yourself silly with your nearest and dearest.

My two least favorite holidays are New Years and Valentine's Day.

One year, I bought the man I loved the soundtrack from the movie, "The Piano" and he gave me a speech about how much he hated stupid holidays popularized by Hallmark that suggested that you only express your love on one day rather than all year around. Years later after we broke up, he admitted that this was a really stupid and shitty thing to say to your girlfriend.

The best Valentine's Day of my life was spent with BBFK. We were each dating some lame-o who didn't want to do anything for Valentine's Day so we went out together and saw a college production of "The Vagina Monologues." We did invite our sig o's along but they politely declined.

This evening was a super close second. I woke up sicker than sick. I was coughing up things, strange things, unspeakable things. On the plus, my UPS delivery came *yay!*, on the minus, the light bulb in my bedroom blew out, leaving me sitting in the dark *wah!*

And I thought I would not make it to the VD is Nasty festivities. I went as far to tell everyone this. But upon hearing that AN was also sick but planning to power through the party, I decided to do the same.

The staff had informed the lovely hostesses that they did not have Karoake in English and there was an ensuing panic that we would all be inventing words and melodies to accompany the greatest pop hits of China. CK practiced in the ways of the Jedi dispensed with this problem. The force is strong with that one.

The second point of concern was in that fact that getting a private room for Karaoke and food would require a $500 minimum. Being that the food was plentiful and inexpensive as was the booze, we kept ordering dish after dish,wine and more wine, and beers by the six pack. We each left with a booze party favor tucked in our bags, a bottle of Tsingtao or a bottle of wine. But after a ton of food, much booze, and six hours of Karaoke we all felt that we got our money's worth. The staff was certainly ready to send us on our way...

The rooms was gorgeous and mostly soundproof unless you were in the ladies room where one could hear everything except the karaoke backing tracks. And we almost had our chance to corrupt the youth when a little 7 year old boy pressed his face up to the glass door. A opened it and tried to coax him into our scary den of song, "sin" and sea cucumber but the boy hesitated and eventually ran into the sheltering arms of his concerned father.

Thankfully, they did not have the Depeche Mode song "Somebody" in their Karaoke library. So I was spared laughing while peeing and barfing trifecta. MomVee, we did sing "I can't fight this feeling any more" in your honor. And Radiohead's "Creep" was a surprisingly excellent Karaoke tune appealing to both genders.

I sang myself hoarse which brought back memories of a sweet sweet piece of hell from college we commonly referred to as Call Backs.

At the end of the night I even got a flower passed to me third hand from a cab driver who got it from a cab rider who got it during what must have been a not very good Valentine's date. After all, people on good dates don't give their flowers to cab drivers.

I hope this gift comes around to that person in the form of a best or second best Valentine's next year. C'mon Universe, what do you say?

And if even I can't speak for a month or die tomorrow, I wouldn't trade tonight for anything.

It was a good night. Better than a room full of flowers and chocolate covered candy hearts.