good notes on bad memories

i had an epiphany the other day while driving to san antonio…

…so we were heading down to meet an old friend (as in the friendship, not the person) and i was telling nik about how said person had, through friends of hers, made it to where i just couldn’t do karaoke. not that i’d sing it, i mean i couldn’t even be in the same room with it. all this was due to her friends, who were a little TOO into it. like they could take a request from the audience, and then call out that code to the KJ (karaoke jockey, for anyone curious) without looking at that little fucking list where you look up what you wanna do by song title and then write down the odd little code (‘BC8242’ or whatever).

that’s fucking spooky.

this was in the mid 1990’s, so it’s not like you had actual all karaoke bars in austin back then…but these folks knew where, on any given day of the week, there was a karaoke machine in a public place. they knew the name of the person running it. and they knew what drinks they did, and didn’t like there. and they would commute, en masse, to said spot to belt it out.

on the positive side, the girl i was with in this group had (and still has) a rather stellar voice.

on the drive around san marcos en route to SA it occurred to me – the problem wasn’t tanya. it wasn’t her friends. it wasn’t even her friends with the little nicknames that bugged the shit out of me. no, the problem was me. and one component to my existence i would abandon only a few precious years later never to commune with again…

SOBRIETY

i was dealing with all this stone cold sober. the ancient asian art of karaoke is NOT supposed to be experience sober. i think the word ‘karaoke’ is japanese for ‘drunk white guy thinks he can hit the notes in journey songs’. THAT was my mistake. i actually remember some fun times watching karaoke a few years later at chacho’s (somebody’s kids needs to respond to the ad and get that place re-staffed so they can open again) with either kimberly or les because i WASN’T SOBER. so that’s the key, damn it. tanya confirmed it over dinner last week! so now i know how to make it through should the need arise (which i doubt it will, but better safe than sorry!)