The other night me, Johnny Rotten, Matty & Zac met up at the lobby bar at Treasure Island for Heather's birthday party for Karaoke. All the usual suspects were there: Brad, Rick & Fran, Wayne, and then Heather showed up with most of the Straight-outta-Cayman Pussy Posse and the party got started.

As usual at karaoke nights, there were some truly horrendous singers. People who make William Hung sound like Enrico Caruso. On the other side of the coin, there were some really good singers there, too. One guy got up and sang “Brian Wilson” by the Barenaked Ladies and as soon as the first syllable came out of his mouth, I swiveled my head around to the 'stage' cause I thought they put a CD on. This guy sounded REMARKABLY like the bigger guy in BNL. He then ruined it later by singing an Elton John song. Boo. Zac got up and sang Jeremy by Pearl Jam and totally upstaged that homo Elton-John-wannabe. :)

Brad's been busy downloading CD+G stuff to augment the Karaoke library, and got up and did a good cover of Secret Agent Man. I was shocked! Brad *DIDN'T* sing a Jimmy Buffet song?! Some girl got up there later and belted out a Britney Spears song, and probably spent as much time practicing singing it as she did practicing her moves in front of a mirror. It gave me a funny feeling, down in the bottom of my chest, down in the cockles of my heart... maybe in the sub-cockle area... maybe the liver... maybe the kidneys... maybe even in the colon, I just don't know.

Heather sang a few songs, and her and Tex reprised their “I Love Rock n Roll” duet that got them into the finals of the Karaoke competition last year at the Hard Rock Cafe in George Town. They also all got really drunk! A few of the pictures are over there on the right. If you're reading this from a search or an archive and they're not there anymore, click over to my Flickr page and they're hiding there. I think at this point I'm going to spring for a Flickr Pro account. It's 45 bucks for a year and you get something ridiulous like 1gb of upload traffic per month.

Treasure Island Resort is still closed to the public, and for good reason. We were just in the lobby around the lobby bar, and if you didn't look TOO closely, it looked like it did before (shitty). If you were to actually LOOK around, the whole hotel looks like it belongs in Vedado Beach in Old Havana. The ceiling is either A) Gone and you stare at the studs or B) the painted part is all stripped off and falling in. The men's bathroom always looked crappy, but you really get the feeling that you're in some abandoned derelict building that someone's decided to have a party in after being in there. Actually, that's pretty close to the truth. The restaurant is open, it's been renamed to the Montecristo Chop House, and they look like they're up and running in fine shape. I haven't eaten there yet, because it's also pretty expensive, but it's on the list of places to go (and of course, I'll post here what it's like afterwards)

Now in defense of Trailer Island, they went into receivership last september (15 months ago) and the previous owner let it tank even before then. Considering the lack of care that ownership put into the maintenance (ie a budget for it, no dig against the miracle workers who made up the maintenance staff to actually keep it open and functioning) and the headless functioning in receivership, and something else... Oh right. A friggin Category 5 Hurricane that beat the entire island to a pulp in September, the staff that are still around have done a pretty good job.

Before the Hurricane, Treasure Island was rated a 3-star hotel. I think that's being pretty charitable. If it were in a bigger city in North America, it would have old guys with nowhere else to go living in it, or it would be a halfway house.