drinkin' buddies

[waider]

So we're in a karaoke bar (what the hell am I doing in a karaoke bar? Oh, yeah. cherchez la femme) and we get talking to these two Italian guys sitting next to us. One of 'em's got flaming red hair, an artifact of some Irish ancestry, and the other looks a bit like Jeremy Irons. I get talking to Jeremy Irons guy and it turns out he's a music producer. I've just now googled, because, you know, you can't believe everything you hear in a bar, and lo, I was indeed drinking with the guy behind Robert Miles, Planet Funk, Spiller's Groovejet, and hugely influential in the '80s and '90s DJ scene in Italy. Yeesh. Should've asked for a business card or something...

Comments

[boutell.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, but what did you sing?

[waider.livejournal.com]

Well, I know I was beatboxing for two songs I didn't know while we waited for the booth to get switched on, and I definitely did most of the work on "Ziggy Stardust". As it happens, we got maybe half an hour of active booth in addition to ten minutes of standing around waiting for it to kick off while our friendly contact in the bar who'd got us the booth on the back of a cancellation argued with the cancellees who'd turned up 15 minutes late.

Yes, beatboxing. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.

[boutell.livejournal.com]

> Ziggy Stardust

Yay!

Um... karaoke booths? Requiring reservations? Switched on? Aroo?

We do not have these in our benighted country. Perhaps you could explain using pitifully inadequate analogies to concepts with which my limited brain is familiar?

[waider.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing it's a japanese thing since the place has a japanese name and serves hot sake and so forth; the booths are basically rooms big enough for about 10 people, with a Windows box providing karaoke services and a pair of mikes that are permanently live. So you can tool around in the booth without the music while you wait for the staff to do whatever it is they do. It's very popular and there's only a limited number of booths, hence the bookings.

You people should innovate more. I hear it's the way to get ahead in the market.

[boutell.livejournal.com]

Neat. They do not have these in Philadelphia, I am 99.9% certain. All karaoke events I've ever heard of in this town are of the "one live DJ, wait a super long time for your turn, but get to be heard by a larger crowd" variety. Which I like when I'm out on my own, obviously. But what you're describing sounds Really Fun with a posse of friends. The crowd I sometimes do karaoke with on Thursdays would probably be happiest that way.

[waider.livejournal.com]

what you're describing sounds Really Fun with a posse of friends

and an Italian producer and his red-haired friend. And a bottle of champagne, for some reason I'm not entirely clear on.

[boutell.livejournal.com]

Hee.

What I don't understand is how lone individuals or couples or whatever would fit into the scene. Is there an etiquette for sharing booths?

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

I believe the traditional Irish etiquette for sharing anything under such circumstances is:

• get drunk
  
• Woo, everyone is my friend[1]!
  
• Share stuff.

[1] With the possible exception of those who get drunk and pick fights.

[waider.livejournal.com]

Aside from the comic stylings of my Celtic friend, who will die painfully the next time I lay hands on him (for this and other imaginary slights, obviously), I don't know what such etiquette might be. I mean, jeez. What are you doing in there on your own in the first place? Why not go to a public karaoke session? Or use the fine-tuned Irish wooing method of obsessing quietly over someone while sober, and then lurchingly confessing your undying love for them while lying in a gutter at their feet?

[boutell.livejournal.com]

Hee. I was imagining that BoothOke had beaten conventional karaoke to a bloody pulp in All Places Irish, or something.

[waider.livejournal.com]

Honestly, before last night I couldn't have told you a single place in Dublin that does karaoke; now I know one, it just happens to be a booth place.

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

If you visit and we go out drinking with Dave B again, that death is almost a given, even without violence on your part.

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

You can see something very much like what you describe in the movie Lost in Translation.

It's Pretty Standard

[odaiwai.livejournal.com]

That arrangement seems pretty standard. In Hong Kong, a Karaoke establishment will have lots of rooms with couches around three walls, a big TV on the 4th with mikes and music[1], tables for snacks and a phone-line to the staff for emergencies like running out of beer.

[1] The music in these places is usually streamed from a central server via what appears to be a simple juke box style web-application.

[wisn.livejournal.com]

Yes we do. I think it's more of a Korean thing than a Japanese thing, but if they're available in semirural Michigan, they gosh darn well are available in Philadelphia.

[boutell.livejournal.com]

They probably aren't. I believe you when you say they are available in semirural Michigan, but if they exist in Philly I've seen no sign of it. And I've looked.

[zadcat.livejournal.com]

I remember noticing a couple waiting for the bus that goes past the Italian consulate here, and they were speaking very good Italian. (Don't ask me how I know, but it was quite different from the patois third-generation Sicilian dialect that passes for Italian around here.) The man had flaming red hair, but he was quite striking because it went with a face that could not have come from northern Europe.