Dan's Papers - August 10, 2007 -

I was at the Billy Joel concert last Saturday at the Ross School in East Hampton and I have to say that I knew the words to every song that he sang. I also was not afraid to belt them out as loud as I could.

Unfortunately for me, there were other people singing along -- like Billy Joel and this other guy who was directly in front of the stage -- who were overpowering me, so I couldn't really show my stuff to the crowd. I didn't care though, after all, this was the Billy show -- he should have his night.

I headed back to my Honda Civic, which was parked at the East Hampton airport amidst the Ferraris, BMWs and this giant yellow monstrosity that can only be described as a tank, and fired up my iPod. While driving, I thumbed my way to the Billy Joel songs and let it rip.

By the time I got to Route 114, I was blasting the song "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" as loud as I could and singing along. After listening to it once, I decided to play the song again, only this time, I would play it quieter and I would call myself up on my cell phone and leave myself a message of me singing the song, so I could hear how good I sounded. You may not know this, but there are a lot of people out there who think that they can sing, because in their head, when they sing, they hear something good. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't one of those people. I really didn't have any doubts at this point, but I just wanted to be one-hundred-percent sure.

I sang my heart out and then I played it back and listened for a minute. Then I listened to it again and then again. I was in shock.

Honestly, I was a little disappointed. No, that is an understatement -- I was really disappointed. In fact, I was embarrassed. I was thinking to myself, gee, I'm really glad that this wasn't recorded and posted on the Internet. if a video of this got out, it could ruin my political career.

I quickly deleted the recording -- which I'm pretty sure was illegal, since I was still driving -- and pulled over to gather my thoughts. I really thought that I had a good voice. People have told me I have a good voice -- how could this possibly be?

I decided to go with the explanation that the recording device on my cell phone had made me sound bad, but for some reason, made Billy Joel sound just like he did on my iPod. Yeah, that must be it. Perhaps it was because I was driving. After all, you are not allowed to use your phone and drive. This could be the reason they invented the law! You can't even focus on singing while you are on your phone.

I felt better and drove off. Stupid cell phones, I thought.

While driving, I came up with the genius idea that, maybe, I should give it another shot. Not wanting to get a DWCP (driving while cell-phoning) or risk the possibility that driving while using a cell phone and singing made my voice sound bad, I pulled over.

I fired up my iPod and scrolled to my favorite Billy Joel song, "Vienna." At the same time, I called myself on my cell phone to get my voicemail. I took a couple of deep breaths to expand my lungs and belted out every word perfectly.

This was going to be the proof that I needed to prove to myself that I could sing. I pressed "1" to listen to my messages and put the phone on speaker.

This is really, I mean, really...bad.

I'm never doing karaoke again.

All this time, I've been lied to, from karaoke bars to my local theater. I felt like going back to the Billy Joel concert and apologizing to the people that were standing around me. I was majorly bummed. I couldn't even listen to the whole thing all the way through.

In the meantime, "Vienna" was playing on my sweet sound system and Billy Joel was singing to me. "You got your passion, you got your pride. But don't you know that only fools are satisfied? Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true. When will you realize? Vienna waits for you."