Karla Karaoke

Last week, Sordid Tales received the following letter in response to a recent column in which I sniveled about how a classic dive bar (Peter D's) removed their kick ass shuffleboard table to became a crappy karaoke joint:

"Dear Ed . . . The stupid shuffleboard table was removed to make more room for the
busting-at the-seams, late night, weekend, karaoke crowd. As for your column,
I?ll be wiping my 'enormous, rumbling, ass with it.'"
Nicole P. Karaoke Queen of California.

Naturally, I feel terrible. I never meant to suggest that Peter D's karaoke night is any crappier than the other karaoke nights. So, to make amends for any inconvenience we have caused, Sordid Tales honors Peter D's Karaoke night and the talented Karaoke Queen of California with the following review.

Thursday, December 15, 2001 -- Karaoke Night at Peter D's:

As I had before, I enter the bar, stool up, order a green bottle, and settle in. A woman with a nightingale voice is singing on stage.

"Gee," I think, "isn't Karaoke at Peter D's spectacular?"

I watch the singer's moves. Oh sure, she's a typical Clairemont skank -- long, thin, filmy, silver-streaked hair; stone-washed jeans drooping off her skeletal hips; and no less than three smoldering meth-boils clustered on her cheek, but I am drawn to her just the same.

She finishes singing and says into the big black microphone, "Thank you, thank you. I'm Karla Karaoke, Goddess of the Big Song. Call me KK."

The crowd hollers for more. Karla smiles, turns to Nicole -- the Karaoke Queen of California -- and says, "Gimme some Gloria Gaynor sister. Let's rock this monkey house!"

Sweet music fills the room as she sings, "At first I was afraid, I was petrified . . ." Her voice is edgeless, like warm sake sliding down your throat. She stretches her maw so wide you can see inside. To some, her mouth is a vile and dank cave -- where an uvula hangs like a moldy, stalactite; where corroded upper teeth dangle upside-down like sleeping black bats; and where a splotchy, sickly, meth-tattered tongue spans across the bottom of her mouth like a guano-splashed cavern floor. But to me she is the Big Song personified.

Karla dismounts the stage and sits on an adjacent stool -- her good side towards me, her meth-boils facing Hiroshima, and says, "Do you know that 'kara' is the Japanese word for 'empty'? And 'okesotura' means 'orchestra?'"

"Kara + oke = empty orchestra. Get it?"

Karla Karaoke is politically and socially enlightened:

She argues that karaoke should be a subject in elementary school.

"What about the children?!?" she cries out.

She contemplates the war: "What is the most popular Karaoke song of the Al Qaeda?" she wonders, and adds, "I bet it's 'Hava Nagila.'"

"Isn't Peter D's karaoke night so much better than the other karaoke nights?" shouts Karla.

"It sure is," I agree, and we high-five.

Karla has karaoke'd from Buffalo to Bakersfield -- a real Jack Karaokouac. She has sung "Bust A Move" in baseball stadiums and bawdyhouses; "Killing me Softly" in kindergartens and crab ports; and "Runaround Sue" in . . .

"The world is my karakorium," she says and breaks out in maniacal laughter.

On stage, a biker-chick is shrieking "Total Eclipse of the Heart," like a ringwraith getting pistol-whipped by a hobbit.

Karla notes that the singer is an insignificant figure in the Karistocracy. "A low brow," she says, and points to a Japanese man sitting near the Coors Light saxophone neon. "He is the King." She says. "He sings in the key of Elvis."

As the poor woman on stage commits Hari-Karioke, Karla whispers in my ear, "Shall we duet darling?"

"My love for you is strong," I whimper, and take her hand. "But it is not as strong as my fear of public address."

"Then join me on stage and I let me sing to you, lover."

"Karla Karaoke, I follow thee."

KK submits a song to Nicole. Oh, what a gifted MC is the Karaoke Queen of California; so deftly does her fingers enter the song code; so dynamic are her EQ levels; so large are her melons.

Before I realize it, Karla and I are on stage and the familiar first chords of Engelbert Humperdinck's, "After the Loving," fills the room. Karla and I turn to face each other. The sight of her meth-eaten cheek soothes my nerves and she sings to me, as if in dream:

"So I sing you to sleep after the loving
With a song that I wrote yesterday."

All is right and good as the slow, steady clack of billiards perforates her song and I imagine KK's naked body against mine -- tora tora tora baby! Here comes the Pearl Harbor necklace.

Then, without warning, she shoves the microphone into my face. I lurch backward, mortified. My fear of public address is a bad as my fear of penis. And right now they are one and the same as a big, black amplified phallus is trying to force its way into my mouth.

"Don't be scared" KK cajoles, "follow the bouncing balls."

"Her love makes gives strength and I crank open the diaphragm, and erupt like Mt. Karaokatoa . . .

"It's so hard to explain all the things that I'm feeling," I sing, tears streaming down my cheek.
"Face to face I just seem to go dry.
I love you so much the sound of your voice makes me hiiiiiigh."

Oh it is good to belt out songs from the heart, and from the soul, here at Peter D's Karaoke, where love lives.

EJD
1/16/02