Rules of Karaoke

Back when I was 20 and running around town like a wild child with my ID that said I was legal to consume alcoholic beverages, my love affair with karaoke began. At first it was a child-like curiosity, and then it was morbid fascination, and finally a weekend pastime. There is something about being able to go on stage and rock out like the amateur you are. You can’t stop replaying the haunting image of watching the guy you swear consumed a half eaten hot dog minutes ago grunt out every third word of Don’t Stop Believing. There is the quiet girl that hasn’t said three words to anyone when she came in the bar but will belt out the theme to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The caricatures that you see singing are plenty, and that is where the entertainment lies. I’ve seen a wide variety of these people singing from sad sacks, to the over-served, and even a few famous faces. When I lived in L.A., I would see celebrities singing at Dimples in Burbank. The one who loved it most – portly Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell.
Although karaoke has several things going against it, the worst is a lack of rhythm. You might get some powerhouse crowd favorites like Bon Jovi or Neil Diamond followed by a depressing solo performance of a K.D. Lang song. Then someone may go up with Kid Rock and then be chased by an artsy indie song that no one knows except a select few elitists. A large chunk of the blame for a disruptive track list like this can squarely be placed on the DJ. Most of the time this has to do with the DJ’s selection of the order. He/she doesn’t have to play the songs in order, but he does anyways because he is lazy or fair. Your job as karaoke DJ is to make a cohesive list that benefits the entertainment of the crowd. I will admit, he can’t save all the crappy songs for the end though, so he does face a quagmire of placing the poor selections with the good ones. I’m well aware that different people have different tastes, but there have to be ground rules for karaoke! I am willing to lay out a few guidelines:

Rule 1: Your Heart Can Go On, Just Not Tonight
Nobody wants to hear your Celine Dion song. We know you are going to sing it like it is your last song, and if the ship decides to go down after you are done singing, we know it would be the best moment of your life. Please show up on Tuesday night somewhere when the other eight people in the bar don’t care what you sing. On the weekend when you sing your aria, we don’t think of how beautifully you sing the song, we just imagine you at home with five cats and a tub of ice cream. And for some reason, these people try to sing like ten times! They put in five karaoke slips at once and we have to hear them every third song. I promise you someone at the bar with rufies is contemplating using them on you solely for the purpose of getting you to shut up for the night.

Rule 2: Know the Words
Yeah, sounds very “duh” but I have violated this rule once and you’d be surprised by how often it happens. My only time I was booed off the stage because my friend stopped trying mid song and berating Neil Diamond by saying it was his worst song. It should almost go without saying, don’t try and offend the crowd while you’re going. For the most part, the crowd is supportive, and you really need to pull some shenanigans to get booed off the stage. You don’t need to know the whole song, but at least the tune and a general idea of it.

Rule 3: Like I Said, the Crowd Wants to Be On Your Side
Know your audience. If you have a more conservative crowd, the Ballad of Chasey Lain probably isn’t the best idea. If everyone is dancing along to the karaoke, doing your best Tool or Papa Roach song isn’t an optimal choice. There are certain songs that can’t go wrong, but there are even more that most certainly can go wrong. I know you really want to sing it to your girl with the purple mohawk thing going on, but we’re not really excited to listen to your romantic version of that death metal song. This rule is meant to be used at the participant’s discretion, so just look around before you do something stupid.

Rule 4: Satire Welcome!
If you want to do a comedic rendition of that crappy Nickelback song, go for it! Lampoon Creed, butcher Taylor Swift, and sing the female part with your bass voice. People get more into karaoke when whoever is singing is having a good time with everyone else. I was recently on a cruise and two guys came up and sang I Had the Time of My Life, and I could not stop laughing at the guy doing the female vocals. People want to see performers, so go ahead and dive for the laughs. My buddy in L.A., Patrick, would go sing Young Girl as creepily as possible and the age of the girl in the song kept getting lower and lower. I don’t think it was appreciated by everyone, but enough people got a rise out of it that it was totally worth it. “She’s only 15!!!”

Rule 5: The Spotlight Doesn’t Follow Just You
Please just pick one or two songs and let it be. Unless there is a severe lack of requests to sing coming in, just do a couple songs and call it a night. Other people want to sing and it doesn’t matter how awesome you rocked the place minutes ago. After we see how this is an attention-fest for you, we get tired of your big ol’ head on stage.

Rule 6: Use of Props and Dance Moves are Encouraged
If there are funny hats and plastic instruments laying around (I’d say a good 40-50% of karaoke DJs bring some performance enhancing supplements to work), dive right in! There is nothing better than an air guitar solo during that musical break or doing your funky chicken dance during Bust A Move. I saw the only good karaoke performance of Billy Jean a little while back, and he pulled every Michael Jackson trick out of the bag including the knees together bouncing and pointing to one spot in the crowd the entire time. Another winner was my old roommate Dewey grabbing the first girl he saw during the musical break of I Believe In a Thing Called Love and playing the leg guitar. In terms of stupid behavior, it is usually funny and encouraged.

I’m sure I could come up with more guidelines, but these seem like a good starting point. Feel free to comment with any other rules that should be added. If the karaoke DJ’s had a sign with rules to enhance the fun, the world would be a better place. And remember, violations of rules like this will result in people like me judging you.

Is Lost the Best Show of All Time?

So the conversation has been floating around that Lost is the best show ever. It is quite possibly the best network sci-fi show ever, actually, it is easily the most viewed network sci-fi, but best show ever? Hardly. I didn't even like every season. Remember pressing the button season 2? Yeah, that season was worthless. Remember Nikki and Paulo? No? Well you don't really need to. Did it have its good moments? Yeah, of course it did. We had the fantastic season that culminated in the Oceanic 6 getting off the island (in my opinion the best season of all of them), some characters doing dreadful things for what they thought they had to do (Ben killing Locke, Michael killing Ana Lucia and Libby, Sawyer killing the con man), and good character development almost all around.

Aside from some legitimately bad episodes (and almost all of season 2), the show was fairly consistent in quality, but it is not one of the best shows ever. I compared this show early on to a magician. It isn't a smart show, but it is clever. It has plenty of slight of hand, and uses parlor tricks to keep our attention. It played on people's need for romantic relationships (only a few people in the show didn't find some kind of love). I know some people that watched the show for nothing more than to see if Jack and Kate would end up together. The writers were like a magician that handed out three cards from a full deck to the audience and said he would guess them correctly. He gets the first two, and the crowd erupts in applause even though we never know what the hell the card the third guy was holding. There were an insane number of plot holes, unexplained mysteries, and simply building up "important characters" and forgetting them altogether (Walt anyone?). If you can't see that as poor writing and incomplete storytelling, then you are simply blinded by the emotional ending that was intended to leave people sobbing for joy. I feel like the flash sideways was an incredibly waste of a story and the 'heaven' or whatever was going on was a ridiculous ploy to satisfy people's desire for a happy ending. I would have been much more content if the flash-sideways never happened and Kate, Sawyer, and the other four had escaped the island and the show simply ended with Jack dying and justifying his faith in his purpose in life. And where was all the forgotten actors like Mr. Eko, Michael, and Walt? Were they implying black people go to hell? I'm totally kidding about that by the way.

Either way, I feel like Lost wanted to appeal to people's intellectual needs throughout the entire series and they took a cheap emotional exit because it was the best card they could play.

I know this all sounds bitter, especially coming from me considering I liked the show a lot and watched it all the way thru. I just think a show that wasted as much as they did can't be considered one of the best shows ever. I can name several shows in the past decade that either have ended or are ongoing that are better shows than Lost in almost every regard (for the sake of argument we are doing non-comedies or this list would get even longer): Mad Men, the Shield, Sopranos, Dexter, Breaking Bad, Friday Night Lights. Personally, I think the Wire is the most flawless show ever made, but I understand there is a lot less people that have seen it and appreciated it. But one thing the Wire did that Lost couldn't do was make everything in the show count. There is not one wasted line, action, character, or plotline in the Wire. With Lost, there was so much wasted, and for that reason more than anything, it cannot even be close to being the best TV show ever. It is a very entertaining show that might be one of the most culturally relevant, but certainly not the best ever.

Falling North

So as it is widely becoming common knowledge, yes I am leaving California. This is a bummer, man. At the same time it is a step forward in the right direction. I didn't like L.A., and I couldn't find a job like I had in L.A. when I moved to San Francisco. I took some risks and had a fun six years in Cali, but it is time to move forward where I can have a higher level of opportunity and start to develop a professional career. I am waiting to hear from back from law schools, and hopefully will be attending one this Fall. Also, I hear unemployment isn't over 12% in MN. And that state isn't bankrupt.

Of course this whole moving to MN thing is a mixed bag. Almost all of my friends there are married, and I give it about a month before one of those couples tries to play matchmaker with me. My parents will be thrilled, and I will get a whole new level of nagging from my mother about finding a nice wifey and making her a baby's mama's mama (is that the right way to describe a grandmother)? It'll be weird being back permanentely, but it will be nice knowing I will have a network of family and friends there. Also the fact that the cost of living will be cut nearly in half will be fantastic as well. I already changed over my car insurance and it dropped a lot. Apparently it is too cold to steal cars in MN.

As it goes though, I don't regret any of it. The California life came full circle and gave me a lot of life experiences I wouldn't have had if I had never left Minnesota in the first place. For instance, I never would have snorted coke off a call-girl's derriere in Minnesota. And I never would have run over a Berkeley student protesting in the middle of the highway and gotten away with it because I said my Prius "malfunctioned." And I never would have had a heart to heart with Kiefer Sutherland in the bathroom after he was feeling down about complimenting the waitress' hair at a bar who had a wig because she was going through chemotherapy and I repeatedly called him "Jack." Ok, only the last one was actually true. Either way, it's been a long and strange ride. But I feel like I made the most of my early-mid twenties.

SUPER HOT VALENTINES DAY!!!

Ok, this has nothing to do with Valentine's Day, the events simply happened on it. Last night, Dewey and I were watching "Man Vs Food" from the Netflix instant queue and decided to watch the San Jose episode. For those not familiar, it is a show about a guy that goes from town to town taking on extreme eating challenges like the Amarillo, Texas steak challenge, hot dog eating contests, etc... The San Jose episode ends with him going to Smoke Eaters in San Jose, and restaurant that has an extreme challenge in eating really hot wings. I thought it would be an awesome idea to take on the challenge, so the next day, we set out to San Jose where I would do something incredibly stupid and Dewey would chronicle it.

Now, to explain how hot these wings are .... well first look at this picture.

The wings are made with a ton of cayenne peppers, house hot sauce, duck sauce, hot BBQ sauce, and a ton of habenero peppers. They told me the mix makes for half a habenero pepper for each wing. The rules were as follows:

1. I have 10 minutes to eat all 12 of the wings. No meat left on the bones and no sauce either.

2. At no point during the ordeal may I drink anything, eat anything else, or use any napkins to wipe myself clean.

3. After they are eaten, I must lick the remaining sauce off my fingers.

4. After the first three steps, I must remain seated without drinking, eating, or using napkins for an additional five minutes to endure the pain.

Now I have done the blazin' challenge at Buffalo Wild Wings easily, but I was honestly not prepared for this. As you can see, the wings are served so there is possibly more sauce than wings. I had to go fishing in sauce to find wings I hadn't eaten. Needless to say, I signed the waiver to attempt it and it was on.

I was excited, and the fact that less than 20% of the people that take on the "Hellfire" challenge actually complete it didn't scare me at all. So I dug in. I started fast and the first wing was down, no problem. Unfortunately, when I started on the second wing, that's when the pain hit me like an angry badger clawing at me. I continued on and within seconds after the third wing, my eyes welled with tears, my nose wouldn't stop running, and the intense burn covered my hands, mouth, and face.

Fortunately, I had the crowd on my side. I didn't see more than five people in the restaurant when I started, but suddenly there were twenty people cheering me on. Apparently they see people try this all the time, and a few have even tried and failed. They were excited to see someone put himself through the pain, and that fool was me.

By wing number six, my hands went numb. I felt like an eighty year old stroke victim and I had to hold the wings in my hands that wouldn't stretch out all the way. On top of that, the pain was insanely unbearable. I clearly didn't respect the Hellfire Challenge going into it, and now it wasn't respecting me. Snot, sweat, saliva, and tears were flowing like the Mississippi and I pushed on. At a certain point, Dewey thought I was going to yakk, and I thought it was possible as well. I was getting to the point where I wasn't even chewing the meat and just swallowing it to finish.

With everyone cheering me on, I made it through by thinking, "If I quit, it will still burn like hell." So I kept on burning like hell. I had one minute to go and two wings left. I was trying to pace myself so I could finish as close to the buzzer as possible. That's when the lovely waitress turned into a nazi stickler for the rules and told me I had to not only finish in less than a minute, but I had to lick the sauce off my fingers as well. And she also pointed out that that last wing still had a tiny piece of meat on it. With her literally counting down from ten, I finished like MacGuyver disarming a bomb at the last second.

Then I went into a state of painful zen. I closed my eyes, held out my hands, and waited five painful minutes. That was the easy part. The bar applauded, then went back to their business, and I bee-lined for the bathroom and used the entire supply of paper towels in there and ran half my body under cold water.

After that, I sprinted back to the bar and drank beers to soothe the pain and then sat uncontrollably shaking until the pain subsided...thirty minutes later. Needless to say, I completed the foolish challenge, won a t-shirt, my photo on the wall, and feel like I never have to do that again. So that was my "hottest" V-Day ever.

Year of the Tiger!!!!!!!!

So the night started with drinks. As it sometimes does. And I started chanting "year of the tiger!!!!" everywhere I went. As I usually find, if you find a theme for your occasion out, your chances of meeting people drastically increase. For Christmas, we wore ugly X-mas sweaters and my roommate is still dating the girl he met that night. So Dewey and I decided tonight was the "year of the tiger night." We made people cheers to it, dance to it, and any other excuse to get it involved.

So after an already solid night out at the pubs, we are thinking of leaving until two women walk in and my roommate says "I'm gonna go act a fool." He walks up and his pick up line is literally "so we're out for the year of the tiger, what are you here for?" Needless to say, I have an Asian girl's number in my phone. Her name: Lily. Her entry in my phone: Tiger Lily.

I'd say it was a good beginning to the year of the tiger.

Vikings-Saints LIVE Blog!!!

8:47pm - after an hour and a half of anger, broken beer bottles in the street, contemplation and more anger. I got a laugh out of wikipedia's page on the Vikings "In disappointing fashion, strangely - and, for Vikings' fans, painfully - reminiscent of the 1998 overtime loss to the Atlanta Falcons, the Vikings lost the NFC Championship game to an NFL Officiating team in overtime on January 24, 2010 by a score of 31-28." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Vikings
While I'd love to blame the loss sorely on anyone but the Vikings, 5 turnovers never helps your case.

7:16pm - and so the curse continues....

7:14pm - Alright, if you're going to call that B.S. pass interference call, you can't give them that catch.

7:03pm Text message I just sent out "No...I'm not ok..."

6:56pm - dammit. I would have picked heads too.

6:53pm - "Another loss by a missed field goal would kill me" Well a Brett Favre interception could be the second worse thing.

6:45pm

6:42pm - "The Vikings have been 0-4 in NFC championship games since their 1977 superbowl loss" SHUT THE **** UP JOE BUCK!!!

6:34pm - 28 - 28...please don't let it be false hope. I have never seen the promised land in my day...

6:21pm - There was the moment. That defining moment where it might be the end of the game. The fumble in the red zone by Bernard Berrian right after he made the huge third down catch. I felt my stomach scooped out like a cold lump of icecream. A miracle needs to happen now.

6:10pm - I guess fumbilitis is contagious. Saints 28 - Vikes 21 (replay pending). Things are not looking good. I feel like the Eagles minus a superbowl loss. Game isn't over, but we need a f***ing miracle. I've turned into a chain smoker, alcoholic, and ate an entire pizza this game. I think the Vikings have taken a decade off of my life.

6:03pm - I am officially crapping myself right now. Tie game and Brett Favre is clearly not going ot be 100% the rest of the game. That means one of four things:
a) we are going to have to make AP carry the game, and he is clearly not in prime form.
b) we are going to make Favre carry the game, and he is prone to Favre mistakes now.
c) The defense is going to have to hold New Orleans to no more points.
d) Tavaris Jackson is going to .... never mind, there are three things.

5:55pm - Can I stop hearing about AP's handshake and how strong it is? Clearly a strong handshake doesn't have anything to do with fumbling, cause captain fumblitis needs to carry the ball with two hands.

5:50pm - The sprint commercial with Flava Flav came on and my roommate commented "This is 2010. Why doesn't he have a digital clock yet?"

5:45pm - Ok, this new John Travolta movie (From Paris with Love) looks bad...like Swordfish bad. I'm adding it to my Netflix queue now.

5:40pm - I think I've yelled out "PENIS FLASHER" three times in the last minute with our door open and the neighbors looking on in shock. AP 2 fumbles and 2 TDs. How much you want to bet he determines the game.

5:30pm - ...ok, time to wake up defense. You just gave that to them. Saints 21 Vikes 14

5:09pm - Thank you, Reggie Bush. .... Damn you AP.

4:58pm - So I can tell Dewey and I have been enjoying the game a bit much. In the first quarter, we could pull off a mean high-five. Now, I made the mistake of throwing in a surprise fist pound. Dewey put up the high-five and confusion was amiss. The next time one of us put up the fist pound and the other put up a five. Mid-stream we both switched to pull off yet another pound-five connection.

4:44pm - So far, this has been an awesome game. As a fan, it is exciting and gut-wrenching. All I know is, if we lose by a missed field goal, I may never recover from it.

4:24pm - It's going to boil down to who can get the most defensive stops (holy hell, I sound like John Madden). It's going to be a boat race, and boat races make me nervous and nautious. Life is like this when you are a fan of a cursed franchise.

4:20pm - Over-under on Saints scoring in the last 2 min of the 1st quarter. You wouldn't give me even odds?

4:17pm - Thank you refs for some generous calls. And Brett Favre for taking some mean hits. Vikes 14 Jets 7. I officially do not take any lead in this game for granted. It could be a 20 point lead going into the 4th quarter and I would still be nervous if I was either team.

4:02pm - GJHLJKSDDJHSGKJHDGSKJHGWYUUYHKBS Vikes 7 Saints 7.

I see how it's going to be...

3:55pm - AHAHahsjsdkjasdhfljksdfkwljhrljssdfd. Vikes 7 Saints 0

3:45pm - opening kickoff coming. They say you do stuff like eat and drink uncontrollably when you are nervous. I've eaten an entire Domino's pizza by myself and am five beers deep.

3:40pm - So far so good. Pants on the ground guy didn't sing the national anthem.

3:15pm - FINAL SCORE Indy 30 - Jets 17. Jets had a good run, but this is Peyton's year. I am terrified of the possibility of meeting up with them. I am also terrified of New Orleans. I don't think anyone really knows who is going to win. Both teams do several things extremely well, so it makes for an exciting game. I am a handful of beers deep and ready to start screaming at my TV. As for the comment on Favre vs Manning. Lets not get there yet. Favre vs Brees is just as big a match-up. Both players have something to prove towards their legacy.

Dewey just turned off the pre-game to play modern warfare 2. Normally I'd object, but I feel like I am going to hear the announcers jinx the game by talking about how Brett Farve doesn't throw interceptions this year and the pants on the ground guy. A lot of people have asked why I don't watch these "big" playoff games with other people at playoff parties or go to a bar. I'll tell you why: other people are annoying to watch games with if they aren't fans of your team. To some degree, even Vikings fans are annoying to deal with. I don't want consoling if we are losing. I don't want band-wagon fans if we are winning. And most of all, I don't want to let them see me cry.

2:25pm - Indy 20 Jets 17. Not looking good for the Jets. Anytime you give Peyton a lead, it means he will most likely beat you in the last 2 Minutes. Dewey is back and cracking beers with me. We should be riled up enough to get our Asian neighbors to stare through their windows after we start yelling at the TV by the time our game starts.

As for Thomas' comment, Visanthe Shiancoe is the "Pants on the floor" player. During a post game locker room shot on live television, apparently everyone missed the fact that Shiancoe had nothing on except his monster black mamba hanging out. For that reason, any time he catches the ball, Dewey and I yell out "penis flasher!" at the bar. It is always funny to scream that out.

1:32pm - Jets 17 - Colts 13 at the half. So has anyone heard the song Prince wrote for the Viking's playoff run? It is awful. Like flat terrible. It sounds like a church hymn. I am no fan of pants of the floor guy, and can't even see why he is funny, but please play pants on the floor before you play that Prince piece of trash.

1:21pm - New York Jets are for real I guess. Jets 17 - Indy 6. I still am not counting out Peyton, but this is not encouraging for the Colts. Looks like they should have gone for that perfect season.

*** For those wondering, I have decided to post new posts at the top from now on. I think this makes it easier for everyone***

1:03pm - Indy field goal, Jets 7 Indy 6. Just heard "pants on the ground" guy is at the game for MN. And have visual proof...good sign or no? http://twitpic.com/zkxqt And Jets are back in the red zone!!! How is Indy losing to them? That said, I'd rather play Jets than Indy in a superbowl.

12:49pm - Wow, 80 yard touchdown pass to Braylon "slippery hands" Edwards. Jets 7 Colts 3. Might be a decent opening game. Ok, so for those that don't know, the Vikings have had a very ...unfortunate history when it comes to winning. As fans, we have very fragile attitudes towards our team and always expect the worst. Being pessimistic about your team doesn't mean your a bad fan. It just means you've had a lot of heartbreak. It's like having a girlfriend cheat on you. If you are paranoid about knowing where she is all the time, it doesn't mean you are overbearing if there is just cause for it. So, now for the Viking's greatest misses in my lifetime: 1998 - This is obviously the biggest heartbreaker. The vikes were supposed to steamroll everyone to their first superbowl. In the NFC Championship game versus Atlanta, our kicker who had not missed a field goal all season misses the game winner. I mean, this is a guy that did not miss one field goal ALL SEASON, and he misses the only important one. It was the single biggest sucker punch to a Vikings fan...ever. 2001 - Vikes go to the NFC Championship game again, lose 41-0. This is essentially the last time they had a realistic chance at the Superbowl until now. Vikings fan go into a period of mourning. 2005 - Franchise quarterback Daunte Culpepper goes to my dad for some legal work in adopting a child. My father gets me a signed football for a birthday gift. Later in the season, Daunte Culpepper tears all 3 CL's in his knee. The value of that football plummets. If it were a stock, I would have lost everything. 2005-2008 QBs - Bring on a short era of inept quarterbacks: Brad Johnson, Gus Frerotte, Brooks Bollinger, and Tavaris Jackson. Bleh. 2009 - hope...

12:43pm (PST) - Just settling in on the man-couch with a case of beer, bag of doritos, and the Colts-Jets game. Pizza incoming for the Vikes game. Dewey is going to the gym quickly so he can somewhat justify his body. Indy just got the first score of the game Indy 3, Jets 0. This live blog thing is new to me, so feel free to comment and I'll try and respond. Please don't correct me on grammer/spelling either, because as the day goes on, it will get worse.

Live Blog Coming Soon!!!

This week had a demanding Sunday for me that involved a vat of Nachos, a beerathon, and most importantly a Vikings dismantling of the Cowboys. Next Sunday will be a lot more of the same. I felt like the viewing experience was worth documenting, so this coming Sunday, there will be blog with live updates during the Vikings game.

It will not so much contain details of the game, but rather the mental state of my roommate Dewey and I. Since the game starts at 3:40pm Pacific (5:40 Central), so expect live updates starting slightly before then. I will be an emotional trainwreck and my liver will hate me too. If I get it together enough, there will be some pictures posted during the game as well. Hopefully this live blog experiment will be entertaining for anyone bored enough to check in.

See you all Sunday...SUNDAY SUNDAY!!!!!!!! Kids get in for just FIVE DOLLARS!!!!