Musings on Karaoke Etiquette and Drinking Company

Last night, after a farewell dinner party for a friend who is graduating and venturing off into the professorhood, I was talked into going out for some karaoke. Now, as most of you know, I love karaoke. However, I tend to limit my performances to those establishments that house private karoke rooms. Since I first started doing karaoke while I was living in Japan, I learned to appreciate the pleasures a good karaoke-box could provide. Indeed, in Tokyo the karaoke-boxes sometimes take up multiple floors of a building. You can rent out a private room at an hourly rate and they will even serve you food and drinks, which you can order from the handy-dandy phone inside your room.

I've always been more partial to this kind of karaoke environment. If I'm going to make an ass of myself, I'd rather do it in the company of good friends rather than complete strangers. But not only that--if I'm going to do karaoke, I want to have the chance to sing a fair number of songs. Public performance is not often conducive to this.

So, I felt a bit wary joining my pals last night at a public karoke venue. I did get a chance to sing two or three times, but overall felt the experience was not as fun as others I've had. In point of fact, I became deeply annoyed by what I considered to be a disgusting breach of karaoke etiquette on the part of the DJs.

Some might have a good laugh at the thought of karaoke etiquette. But I've come to realize that I actually have several strong feelings on this matter as a result of what I witness last night. My general thoughts are as follows:

1. The karaoke DJs running the show should not also insert themselves as participants! I mean, how ridiculous can you get? The two losers responsible for the karaoke set-up kept getting up and singing their crap-ass songs, thus taking away from opportunities for the audience to participate (which I thought was the entire purpose of the evening). I think these guys were under the impression that they were merely doing karaoke gigs until they make their big break on American Idol. Talk about delusional! Their song choices were revolting (one of them clearly felt he was the next Garth Brooks/Tim McGraw/random country dude) and their general presence annoying.
2. Know your bloody audience! This is a general principle of rhetoric that all MCs/public performers must get a handle on if they plan to continue in their chosen profession. For instance, if your audience keeps choosing songs of the funk, pop, and 80s variety, DO NOT KEEP PLAYING HORRID COUNTRY SONGS DURING INTERMISSION FOR FUCKSAKE! They don't want to hear it and will in fact be more likely to consider committing violent acts upon your person.
3. Hire a monkey if you are too incompetent to change CDs by yourself! I swear, there were two guys manning the karaoke sytem and they couldn't do this properly. In essence (and I watched this closely a couple of times), all they had to do was switch out the CDs and cue up the appropriate track for each new performance. Yet for some reason, DJ #2 could not manage this simple task without the support of DJ#1, who frequently felt the need to wander off on break to: a) get more beer, b) flirt with the barmaids, c) go to the bathroom every five minutes (presumably to whack off). So DJ #2, a mere flunky it would appear, just stood up there giving an air of activity while in effect doing nothing until DJ #1 returned from his ramblings.

Let's just say, as the evening wore on I moved from my initial moderate Woodchuck cider to hard liquor. It was the only way I could keep myself from throttling the loser DJs up on stage.

Which brings me to the second half of my personal meditations from the evening. Not to sound like a complete lush or anything, but I do miss the environs of a good Scottish pub.

The Brits know how to drink. And they have sadly ruined me for life. I can suck back pints with the best of them. But here in the USA it seems like I rarely find people who can keep up with me for a night of serious drinking. Okay, sure, I could find a frat boy with the IQ of a doornail who could chug them back and belch all night but that's not what I'm looking for.

When I lived in Scotland, pubbing was often something my fellow grad students and I did after a hard day of seminars. We would finish up around 4:00 and head over to the pub. We'd then settle in and share pints and chips while discussing everything from literary theory to politics to music, art, and so on. These were intelligent people and we would take a nice long leisurely trip down the road of inebriation while taking turns buying rounds for the table. Quite often it wouldn't be until close to midnight when we'd stumble out of the smoky interior of our pub and head home feeling intellectually sated and several sheets to the wind. I admit, an outing like this required a certain mental and physical stamina in order to keep up with the conversation and the many rounds of pints being shared. At first it was a little daunting even for me, but I quickly got the hang of it and was welcomed into the bosom arms of my British compatriots as one of their own. Honestly, perhaps it's inherent in my genetic makeup. After all, my dad's side of the family are all British (he was born there but his parents immigrated shortly after WWII).

Sadly, drinking culture in the USA is much less convivial. And when I'm in the mood for a long evening of pints and intellectual discussion, I find I'm without company to share. Not that my friends aren't intellectual--don't get me wrong--it's just that most of them don't have the stamina for drinking to accompany these kinds of discussions. Thus, I'm the only one drinking which is never fun. It reeks a little too much of alcoholism... I need it to be a group activity to fully enjoy it I suppose. So it seems I shall merely have to recall with great fondess my pub adventures in Edinburgh and hope that I get the chance to go back again some day if I want to spend a long day drinking good lager and munching on salty chips while discussing the finer points of feminist theory in a post-modern world.