Average Jane Prepares to Lip-Synch

I’ve only been at my company since it acquired my previous company last September.  I’m a new kid; I want to fit in.  Thus, I remain at the stage of eagerly agreeing to anything anyone asks me to do.

Well, I got a little too agreeable last week when someone asked me if I would be willing to participate in a little skit at our company-wide meeting this coming Wednesday.  They’d heard that I’m a singer and, well, they needed someone to dress up as Axl Rose and sing a couple of verses of a song sung to the tune of "Welcome to the Jungle."  Other people would be dressed as Slash, Duff, etc. 

I was really busy that day and in the middle of a bunch of different projects at once, but I found myself saying "yes."

Aaaagggghhhh!

First of all, the meeting starts at the ungodly hour of 8:30 a.m.  Who among us can do more than croak out a weak greeting to our fellows at that time of day?  Second of all, am I about to turn myself into the biggest geek in the whole company (and not in a good way)?  Everybody’s always been pretty nice there, but I haven’t made (much of) a spectacle of myself up until now.

I decided that the whole experience would be a lot less painful with the live singing taken out of the equation.  Last night I took an instrumental version of the song home to our studio and recorded the vocals over it so I’ll be able to concentrate on Axl pantomime tomorrow.  Yes, my Ashlee Simpson mockery karma is coming back at me:  I’m about to commit lip-synching.

Now I’m trying to decide if that makes things better or worse?  It’ll be better in that the audience will have a fighting chance of hearing and understanding the lyrics.  The "worse" part comes in with the lip-synching itself, which is about equal with karaoke on the self-respecting singers’ no-no list.

All I can do now is just put on my wig and sunglasses, go with the flow, cavort about as needed and hope I get points for fearlessness.  After that, I’ll work on learning to say "no."