This past Thursday night was one of the most enjoyable nights in recent memory.

The a cappella group that I’m a part of this summer, The Funktors, recently got its first gig: opening for Jon McLaughlin at a company barbeque on Monday.  This is very, very exciting.  We’ve been rehearsing about three times a week for four hours at a time for a few weeks now, and working pretty hard at preparing ourselves.  This Thursday, we were missing a few members because of scheduling conflicts, so our rehearsal was short and not terribly productive.  On a whim, we decided that it might be fun to go sing outside and get some fresh air.

We wound up wandering around downtown Seattle from around 10pm until 11pm and singing songs at various street corners for all of the homeless people and drunken clubbers who would listen.  It was a real joy when some random passerby would compliment us, or even go so far as to stop and dance along.  We even made $1 from a woman who gave us a tip, despite the fact that we had no tip jar/hat/guitar case.  On top of all of that, we sounded amazing.  Maybe it was the adrenaline, or maybe it was the acoustics of singing outside, but we were in tune, on time, and really just loving every note we sang.

Also, some guy spit at us.  This is patently absurd, mostly because we are probably the most harmless group of college-age, mostly Asian, happy-go-lucky singers you could ever encounter at 10pm in downtown Seattle.  Seriously, we couldn’t even hurt someone if we tried.  What sort of thought process goes like, “Hey look, a bunch of Asian kids singing ‘Brown Eyed Girl.’ I think it would a rational decision to spit at them.”?

Jerk.

Today was probably one of the hardest dance classes I’ve ever been to.  It was only about an hour and a half long, but our instructor (Jeromeskee, from the Massive Monkees) pushed us hard, and we wound up doing number of exercises to train our endurance.  And to top it all off, we ended the class with a battle.  Everyone was dead tired, but it was still a pretty decent battle, all things considered.  It’s remarkable how much more energy people have when the activity turns from an exercise to a dance and a competition.  If nothing else, I will definitely sleep well tonight though.

A capella rehearsals are still as hardcore and enjoyable as they started out being, and I think the group is definitely coming together and starting to blend and sound really good.  I’m singing first tenor, which surprised me at first because I usually sing bass back with the Harmonic Series at MIT, but I’m improving my range a lot, so I think it will work out in the long run.

A fellow intern bought Rock Band last night, and he should be getting it tomorrow.  I am pumped.

What are people doing for the 4th of July?