BETALEVEL

Piracy – Karaoke – Conviviality
Saturday, January 22, 2011
10pm until late
Free

Ah, the good old days, when men were men, our country was strong, and Swap Meet was once a month. Remember those days?

Yeah, it’s a bit foggy for us too.

And really, the more we think about it, the more we remember that those days of old weren’t always so good; that men qua men certainly weren’t all that great (they were kind of dicks most of the time, no?); and our country, our bleepin’ country, seemed to have something to prove regarding its strength, so it kept getting itself embroiled in questionable wars and whatnot. And Swap Meet? Well, frankly, there were times that the end of the month would roll around and the thought would occur to us: Didn’t we just do one of these things? That doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun, but it often didn’t inspire the thrill, the excitement, the sheer pent up frenzy of desire that singing Men Without Hats in a back alley basement in Chinatown should engender.

So we decided to no longer do it on any regular schedule. We’d only do it “when we felt like it.” And generally, since then, that has been about every other month or so. But busy schedules and vacations and holidays and weather-induced malaise have conspired to create a nearly four-month gap since our last Swap Meet. And, let us tell you, we are jonesin’ bad. We’ve got the shakes. We’ve got the sweats. We passed by that copy shop downtown where they do karaoke in the back and a couple of us had crazy heart palpitations and started hallucinating. It’s serious.

But, thankfully, the stars and our calendars have finally aligned: this weekend we can get our fix.

Oh, the sweet ecstasy of song. Our spoon runneth over. You say there is no spoon; we say you can dance, you can dance, everybody look at your hands.

What Is It?

Swap Meet is an aperiodic celebration of the cultural commons organized by The Royal Academy of Nuts+Bolts and Superbunker. We have a poorly-organized music exchange, enthusiastically amateur karaoke, and an overall Betalevel open house with snacks and drinks for all.

What to Bring?

• bring: your singin’ voice and dancin’ shoes (optional)
• bring: some storage media and/or some music filez and/or your personal music device of choice (optional)
• bring: drinks, snacks, or a kindly donation (optional)
• bring: a defiant sense of joy in the face of our eroding cultural freedoms (required)

What to Sing?

Here’s the house karaoke list