Saturday, May 07, 2005

Egyptian Kareoke

In celebration of my friend's birthday, I did kareoke last night with a couple of friends. We went to this pub that was in the Marriott. Considering that it was a Friday night, the place was pretty empty. I find that kareoke night at any bar is usually quite predictable. There are certain characters that always seem to appear on stage. The guy who takes himself way to seriously, especially considering he's singing songs like "New York, New York" and/or "A Friend's a Friend Forever". There's the girl who does kareoke so much that the Kareoke DJ (or whatever he's called) knows her favorites so well that he can easily guess 75% of the songs she will pick out. But my personal favorite is the incredibly drunk man. This guy can't carry a tune in a bucket. But in his drunken state, one of three things goes on: (1) he is deeply moved in his heart to sing a song that can express the insert emotion here that he has been feeling, (2) he decides that he is actually a good singer and his freinds and family have been jealous of him all along so they told him he was no good to hold him back, or (3) he knows what kareoke is really about ... bad singing. This guy is my favorite because he gives everyone the courage to go up there and do it, because chances are you can't possibly sound any worse than him.
Anyhow, my freinds and I get there. We sit down and order our drinks and get a song list book. Both me and my freind Katie pick out our songs, but we don't have any slips of paper to write down our selections. So we go over to the booth. The music is quite loud and telling someone who doesn't speak english very well that you want to sing kareoke is not easy. So I go up first and say that I want to sing "you were meant for me" by Jewel. I get a blank stare. OK, so Katie asks to sing "I wanna dance with somebody" by Whitney Houston. The guy is completely baffled and gets the main kareoke guy to come and talk to us. So Katie repeats her request to this guy, who is pleasantly startled by her request and says "ok, what song do you want to dance to?" I thought I would die laughing. The poor guy. We couldn't stop laughing.
We had a great time. I wish I could write more, but I have to go now.

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