In the hubbub and the amber light of a crowded night spot, Don Carlson moves smoothly through the crowd. He is shirtless and in stocking feet, and he weighs 330 lbs., not counting the tiny gold angel wings between his shoulder blades. ("You have to say how tall he is," his fiancee urgently advises, "or people will think he's this little round guy.") So, all right, he is built like an N.F.L. tackle, stands just shy of six feet tall, and is more graceful than any man in heart-shaped pasties and a 48-in. diaper has a right to be.
It is what makes him a star. Disguised by day as a shy and unassuming lubrication-equipment mechanic, Carlson is acclaimed by night -- Could we have ; a big hand, folks? -- as Donnie Lovedart! The first few notes of a familiar tune by the Spinners come up on the sound system, and then he's off, moonwalking across stage with his shades down and an arrow ready, singing, or seeming to sing, "Cupid, draw back your bow . . ." Lovedart is an agreeable fake, a master of the command nonperformance, an angel, yes, but also a duke- duke-duke of the lip-sync world.
Time out for a definition. As used here, the term lip sync does not refer to Audrey Hepburn pretending to sing Wouldn't It Be Loverly? in the film My Fair Lady. It has much more to do with the time, for instance, that this writer executed his memorable rolled-lip version of Mick Jagger singing Brown Sugar among friends at a small party in 1975. It has to do with your own marvelous rendering of New York, New York, the time you turned up the radio and cut loose somewhere out on I-80 east. Except that now people do it onstage. Some of them actually make money at it, with friends filling in on air guitar or blowing a mean sax solo on a toilet-bowl plunger. And other people come out to watch.
On this particular evening, lip sync as entertainment lives at a club called City Slickers, down the hall behind a real estate office on the main street in Lake Geneva, Wis. Tonight is the culmination of a lengthy sequence of preliminary contests, with ten winners from previous weeks competing for the championship prize -- a trip for two to Las Vegas or $438 cash. Four judges will score them on originality, costume, showmanship, audience reaction and the all-important ability to get the words right. Two points off for "swallowing the mike," but, of course, tonight's talent is beyond that. They have mastered not just the words but the trembling lower lip and the anguished facial contortion on the "oh-oh-oh."
Between sets, in the upstairs hallway that serves as a dressing room, everyone is casual. Why do they do it? The answers, in decreasing order of peer acceptability, are: for the money, for the laughs, as a creative outlet, to gain stage presence and stretch their personalities, or (and here, anyone within earshot rolls his eyes) to break into the entertainment big time.