#103 granite idol

Oh how I have been wanting to tell this story, and it is finally time.

Early last month, my friend Terri at work asked me to help her with a project. The company's leadership was going to have its annual meeting, and after the dinner there was going to be entertainment in the form of a "Granite Idol" competition. Each branch office was asked to send in a video of someone performing a song, hopefully integrating Granite somehow.

So I thought about it overnight. The next morning, in the shower where all great ideas come from, I figured it out. "Viva Las Vegas" turned into "Viva Granite". I even came up with some words in the shower.

When I got to the office that morning, I closed my door and started writing. I cracked myself up, I must say. My friend Kelsie saw me in my room laughing to myself, so she came in and I told her what was going on. Along with Terri, she was the only other person who knew anything about it. The branch manager, Brad, would soon find out about it, too. The four of us were the only people in the branch, I think, that knew.

Anyway, I wrote the song, downloaded the karaoke version of "Viva Las Vegas" and practiced it for a couple of weeks. Then Terri hired Fred, a local videographer, to come to our office one evening after hours to film it. Terri created a power point presentation with pictures of work our branch has done for my background. My stage was a pair of end tables. I went through the song a couple of times with the music playing on my iPod speaker. Fred suggested I sing with the song in my ear only, so to speak, so I put in my earphones and slipped the iPod in my pocket and sang my little heart out.

Here's what I know about the video: I really can't stay in tune and I have the most obnoxious head bobble thing going on. But I think the words are pretty clever and that my hair looks nice.

The filming was about a month ago. The leadership conference was held this week, and the videos were shown on Wednesday night. And I didn't win. But it's ok, because I guess I got pretty good reviews. Then I got an email today saying that because of a glitch in the scoring, the results were nullified and the CEO has declared everyone wins. What do we win? I don't know.

I've talked to a couple of leaders from my office who were there and they said the whole thing was really cool and that they liked my song very much. So that's good.

I'm mostly glad I did it. It's a little embarrassing, I guess, when I think about it. I don't really want everyone at the office to see it. In some ways it was easier to do it because I knew I wouldn't be there to see it with all the people and I only know a few of the people who did see it. I showed the video to my boys here at home. T thought it was neat. MT didn't really comment. When I asked him he just said, "Oh yeah, it was ok," or something like that. Hey man! I'm not a professional singer! I'm an accounting person for Chrissakes! Cut me some slack. At least I tried something and even if it wasn't great it was fun.

So that's my story about Granite Idol.