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Bungalow Idol re-introduces a karaoke contest that’s intruiging, encompassing ingenuity and even a bit of edge in its song selection. So on this and coming Fridays you could, conceivably, warm up your winter voice with classics of everything from Edgar Winter to alternative to Hazy Shade of Winter, as those are among the more varied than usual styles you’ll likely be up against. So be different and rock like an alto while alt? —– (And see more comments that are just cold, added to this post’s end just before the sun sets and brings more frost.)

Or slide some soprano or salsa or swing into your song set, as you’ll want to do more than one, since in music it’s the more the merrier.
Yes, Bungalow Idol is going all in again, back in full force for singers all this month, and this is not your father’s karaoke contest, or your mom’s melodies. Although you’re likely to see classic rock and country and even a show tune or two performed at this Vital Idol karaoke competition. And more at this year’s installment of the long-running set of shows, at which you can compete.
And granted, as far as what you’ll be going up against, this competition has what you’d expect to hear as far as the karaoke classics being crooned, but it in a more diverse way here often has a harder edge. You could come listen, not only sing, to Shinedown as well as Sheryl Crow, with Kid Rock. So country also stakes its claim.
So if you think you’ve got the goods, there are still qualifying rounds with singers advancing the next two Fridays, and then the prizes will be bestowed the first Friday in February. You can begin by throwing your hat in the ring at the pristine Lakeland club, the Bungalow Inn, just shy of 9 p.m. So don’t be Twice Shy.
Speaking of twice, we will double down with the tunes at the Willow River Inn in Burkhardt, also referencing Friday night. Then it is Burning Daylight (taking the stage a few hours after sunset) following up on Double Take, last weekend’s gig by another somewhat newer band to the area. But this Friday’s band that burns with classic music covers has been around for more than just a few days — they’ve been rockin’ for enough years to have heard their artists perform onstage early-on, then emulate. That’s quite unlike another band by the same name, just now playing on the other end of The States, that’s a bunch of young guns just getting going.

This is more about my cold, cold heart and how it has turned blue (banners aside):

The snowy season has brought with it a change in pace as far as holiday decorating downtown in Hudson. While the cool and newer and more prevalent big ornaments on the light poles didn’t last, as they were taken down soon after New Years, the fully ablaze Lakefront Park, more than two blocks running sideways, still has a holiday light for virtually every twig on every tree — and let me tell you, there are a lot of them. But the display gets shut off before bar time.
Hey, you can’t have it all, as it takes bucks to run those bulbs. Ask the folks who — to their credit still have kept doing their big front yard that’s fully decked out with lights — found it necessary to ask the city for a permit to sell fireworks in summer to help pay the big electric bill in winter, and had a fight on their hands. All has been resolved (apparently?) as their are still bright lights in that part of our bigger city, as this had become, while traveling the freeway, a lighthouse-like beacon beckoning holiday travelers to slide their eyes to the side and behold.
(But those holiday ornaments on light poles, and some of them could have been called Big Balls, have been replaced with numerous tapestry-type banners promoting something again, really cool, the Hudson Hot Air Affair in early February with its theme Rockin’ With The Coldies.)
I also spied a sparkly snowman up high, frozen in place in the left-side window of a second-story, brick-facade-offered-otherwise, apartment in mid-downtown — just above one of those balloon affair banners.
A hockey-rink-length away, Season’s Gallery had hawked its winter sale, by using a whole white sheet that fully covered one of its four big windows, then the next day reduced it to just a two-foot-high strip mid-window that put on full display all the cool art items behind.
Speaking of hockey and its rinks — one but is there a second one? — there is an outdoor variety in New Richmond that now has, finally, been fully re-introduced and re-made since temps are now below freezing. But what about the equal-in-size space next to it that is only half iced over? Is it a rink waiting to be made ready, or simply a lot for your rigs.
And in a like manner, if you get my drift, we wonder if this has been used yet … New Richmond has again placed big plastic bags over its fire hydrants, to protect them from snow and such. But this has been scarce and sparse. So could the hydrants be used for another, even higher purpose?

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