The sadness of karaoke night at the soulless suburban bar

Most. Predictable. Sentiment. Evar.

 

i'm sorry, but someone had to say it.

 

The one time I've done karaoke, me, a couple of friends, and a few girls from the paper we were out with went up to do "Ice, Ice, Baby." Started off fine. By the time we got to "Rollin! In my 5-point-0..." I looked behind us and saw all of our Fly Girls had sneaked off stage and back to the table.
Fail, thy name is Batman.

Another time, went out to a karaoke bar on a blind date. The girl was going out with her friends, and I tagged along. Only one of the three or four women in the group was remotely attractive (sadly, it wasn't the one I was meeting), and I couldn't help but laugh to myself as the karaoke host tried to hook up with her all night long. The Karaoke Pimp flipped through songbooks, made the sensitive doe-eye look (all the while wondering whether this woman was a 36C or 38C, and trying to guess the color of her panties) and sang a half-dozen songs directly to her. It was alternately amusing, pathetic and sad -- for me, since that jackass probably got closer to a drunken sympathy grope than I would for another two years.

 

Bubs:

If it makes you feel any better — and I know it won't — I walked into my hotel at 10 p.m. Thursday night and in the bar there was some clueless sphincter majoris squealing out Led Zep's "Rock 'N' Roll" in a voice so high and so pained that I can only assume that the sound was akin to the noise Stan made when Sportschick cut his balls off.

Worse yet, there was a sign at the door that read, "Entertainment charge: $5."

Personally, I'd rather load a nail gun with 2-inch electrogalvanized roofing nails, hold it to my forehead and pull the trigger repeatedly until I was numb than give some whiskey-besotted doorman $5 to hear Stan lose his nuts.

It got no better when I walked by an hour later to hear some wanna-be cowboy crudely crooning out "She Thinks My Truck Is Sexy" in the vain hope of a last-call hand job in his '89 Silverado, the one with the rear-window decal of a kid pissing on a No. 24.

That said, I once witnessed four Samoans who were so drunk they could hardly stand up do dead-nuts-on four-part Motown harmonies to Four Tops and Temptations hits. To this day, that remains the sole redeeming karaoke moment I've seen to date.

 

That's because you've never heard me bust out 'Gettin' Jiggy Wit It' But seriously, four Samoans belting out four-part harmonies sounds awesome...

 

Thanks for documenting that horrific night, Tom.

 

damn, batman. i was saving that for, what turned out to be, today.

god bless your sense of humor, my man.

 

Maybe you didn't enjoy it cause you didn't realize he was singing tractor

 

The weirdest karaoke experience I've had was last spring, after a rugby practice. I walk into the bar where everyone headed after practice and to my right on stage were two middle-school-age softball players (apparently ther ehaving dinner with their family) still in uniform, singing "My Red High Heels" in monotone voices. They didn't even act like as if they were enjoying it.
Then some old guy sang "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
And another old guy sang "Red, Red Wine."

 

The Fugees did Killing Me Softly?

 

The version in a karaoke bar, probably.