In Wisconsin: Lip Sync Live, Onstage Tonight

By RICHARD CONNIFF

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.

Kim Buchan, one of tonight's contenders, says she has sometimes made $300 a week doing showcases. But "show biz, period, is so unpredictable" that she also works as a cashier. She got started in high school. "Would you believe I used to weigh 200 lbs.? And nobody liked me, nobody. Then I started with this lip-sync ensemble. They were trying to be real polite about my weight, but it was kind of an eyesore." She became svelte enough to play Lili von Shtupp, the hooker who sings I'm Tired in Blazing Saddles. Then she dumped the ensemble and went out on her own.

"Right now, being in the big time isn't feasible," she says. "So this is a nice substitute. Because I can get up there and be somebody I'm not and feel comfortable doing it. It's kind of like an escape. That sounds Hallmarkish -- I mean, totally generic. But I can get up there and be Lili von Shtupp in garters and be totally dragged out and say, 'Here I am, accept me.' And they do, they do accept me. I got third place with that act, and that was only because there were these two white girls ahead of me in housecoats and horn- rimmed glasses singing Respect, and they were great."

A trio called the Tidal Waves comes out in straw hats and Mexican ponchos to do the Kingston Trio's Tijuana Jail at 45 r.p.m. Donnie Lovedart does a hip- rolling dance and flips hearts backhand to the ladies. The two girls in housecoats (bad news, Kim, they're back on the bill tonight) demand "R-e-s-p- e-c-t." And in a strategic countermove, Buchan leaves Lili von Shtupp in the dressing room, teases out her hair and does her Whoopi Goldberg routine instead -- head rocking brainlessly from side to side, arms flopping in front of her like windshield wipers in the delay mode -- a white woman from Illinois imitating a black woman from New York imitating a surfer chick from California.

Novelty acts go down best with the crowd. The hot-and-heavy numbers are just too perilous. Artist No. 5 knows how to dance, but does the hand gliding down the torso suggest desire or gastrointestinal distress? Artist No. 7 wins points for wearing fishnet stockings, studded belts and a torn, painted neon cape. But for a terrible moment as she writhes on the stage, it looks as if she has got tangled in her costume. Also the sunglasses are crooked. There are no Michael Jackson imitators. You cannot compete with a big-time video, and anyway, the word upstairs is that Jackson can't lip sync his own songs.

The hit of the evening, and ultimately the winner, is John Ocacio, a former Arthur Murray instructor and a veteran of the disco era who once appeared on American Bandstand. Tonight he's wearing combat attire and camouflage makeup for a monologue about being a 19-year-old in Viet Nam. His act consists of standing with his rifle in a bayonet-thrust position and making robot-like movements, ratchetting across the stage on the stuttered word "nuh-nuh-nuh- nineteen." On a bit about post-traumatic stress disorder the movements go haywire. He throws a grenade. He takes enemy fire, and as he falls forward he gasps, "Was it worth it?" The crowd goes wild. So do the judges, giving him 191 out of a possible 200 points.

Lovedart takes third place, after the Tidal Waves, and hands the $75 check to his fiancee for their wedding fund. (They're a lip-sync couple. They met on the circuit, and their courtship included a lip-sync duet of Paradise by the Dashboard Light, which could loosely be described as a love song.) Asked about his future, Lovedart concedes that he's thought about putting together a portfolio and taking it to an agent. "But I don't know how I would handle the success." What he means is that he's already been on television, and it was hard to face all the strangers congratulating him afterward. "A lot of people think it takes talent," he muses. "To me, I don't think it takes a lot of talent."

Other competitors say they have been followed by teenage girls in the local shopping malls. One says he was spotted by a guy in the fast lane on the expressway who felt compelled to congratulate him at 60 m.p.h. Kim Buchan has actually had people tear at her hair and clothes. One time, when Madonna was due, a television film crew had Buchan dress up and drive around Chicago in a limousine. "People mobbed me. They thought I was Madonna. They thought I was Rosanna Arquette. This guy came up and said, 'Who are you?' So I was supposed to say, 'Who do you think I am?' And he said, 'Cyndi Lauper.' I mean, come on, gimme a break."

Back at the television studio afterward, Kim went into the ladies room and bumped into Oprah Winfrey. "Are you who I think you are?" Kim asked.

"I sure hope so," Winfrey replied.

But who knows? Maybe it was just a really good lip-sync act.