A Unique Karaoke Experience

Thanks to the suggestion of my parents, Lori and I traveled yesterday to Kokopelli Winery about 25 miles south of Scottsdale.  Kokopelli, a fertility deity, is a prominent figure in this area and can be seen on the wine glasses below.

Lori’s boyfriend Mike who also just "happens" to be out here, met us at the winery.  The wine tasting was to be your choice of six of their wines.  But after making friends with our host, Mariah, mine may have become a few more than just six.  

Here are the extra glasses of Cabernet that I received!

The food and the wine were both excellent.  Towards the end of the meal, Mariah even allowed us to come behind the bar and pour our own wine.

As with my last visit to a winery, I thanked our host for her generosity and told her to follow along on my blog.

In the afternoon I found out that I had received mail!  Beth, Nikki and my parents all sent me a little something to help with my beer fund!  Thanks!  I will be sure to report back to you which beers you helped to knock off the list!

Last night Mike, Lori and I were welcomed at the resort with a mexican fiesta of sorts.  I may have forgotten to mention yesterday that Lori and I are by far the youngest people at the resort.  Lori believes the average age to be mid-70's.  I would have guessed a little younger.  If this gives you any idea, when a song that first came out in the 1940's was played we heard one woman exclaim..... "ooohhhh, I was ten when this came out."  I think she was sitting near the woman who was 92.

Apparently this older crowd loves fiestas, as they were all present for their big night out and ready for some good food and good entertainment.  I was hoping I could provide the latter.  

This sight was only matched by our karaoke host, pictured below.

Joe, originally from Sicily, sang his first few songs in different languages.  I immediately worried that none of his song selections would be in English and I was going to have to sing in Spanish or fake my way through in one of my other fluent languages like Italian or German.  

Luckily for me (and the crowd) I soon learned that Joe did in fact have songs in English.  

If I wasn't already aware that this would be a unique karaoke experience, Joe also gave a power point presentation as he talked to the crowd.  This was followed by a trivia contest.  My favorite was number three "Cows and People."

After hearing some show stopping songs like "Bingo" (yes, one woman actually sang "b-i-n-g-o and bingo was his name-o")  I decided to entertain the audience with some ABBA.  When I got up to the microphone I told my geriatric karaoke friends this song was for my cousin Lori and asked them to encourage her to come up and help me sing.  They all began to clap and cheer.  Lori was not amused.  Needless to say, I sang alone.

Mike, however, did sing with me!  We closed the one hour (yes, ONE hour....who has karaoke for one hour?) show with a little Frank Sinatra.  Unfortunately it was a jazz version of Fly Me to the Moon, which neither of us could follow.  As you can see, we weren't really sure what to do.

At the end of the evening, I knew I had to get a picture with the karaoke jockey, Joe.

As Lori, Mike and I walked back to the room, we passed the 92 year old woman and her family.  One of them said "we enjoyed your karaoke tonight Chrissy!"  I said "thanks" and said to Mike and Lori....."look, my fans in Arizona love me!"