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A bit unsteady on her feet, the woman picks up the microphone. She turns around, facing her audience. Hearing her cue, she begins: “First I was afraid, I was petrified.”
On the other side of a wall, I yell out, “I KNEW IT!”
I work in the Banquets department at a Marriott conference center hotel. We book all kinds of groups from all kinds of places, from the staff of the local Tall Texan bar to an international meeting of Samsung employees, who had their menu choices printed on cards because not all of them spoke English.
Not too long ago we hosted a major snack food company (which I’m not going to name), and on their last night in the hotel I was witness to the craziest Drunken Karaoke Party I’ve ever seen.
First they got a “reception,” with food. A reception is different from a dinner in that the foods served are lighter, and the guests are expected to eat less. HA! Try telling that to the guy who loaded up his plate with about twelve hot wings on his first trip through the line! Then later he asked for more! Eventually the chefs started saturating the wings with so much hot sauce that no one in their right mind would go back for another round.
Then there was the lady who had such amazing bad timing that every time she went through the taco bar line, we were out of beef. She thought there was some kind of conspiracy against her. I’d sympathize, but she was a jerk about it. I love everyone in the world, but I make an exception for the ones who yell at me about taco meat.
When I heard that this group was going to have karaoke at their “reception”, I immediately made a prediction to my coworkers. Somebody would sing Friends in Low Places, and somebody would sing I Will Survive.
At first, as is usually the case, people were slow to get up and sing. Nobody wants to be the first one, or the second one. But don’t underestimate the power of alcohol.
These folks had three bars at their party. They were given tickets, which they could exchange at the bars for alcoholic beverages. I don’t know who was handing out the tickets, but some of those guys looked like they had just scored five hundred thousand freaking points at Skee-Ball.
I took a Film Comedy course in college, and somewhere between watching Charlie Chaplin eating his shoes and Slim Pickens riding a phallic bomb, we talked about Apollonian and Dionysian rituals. The theory was based on writings by Nietzsche (who preferred Keaton over Chaplin). As I recall, it suggests that Apollonian rituals are those parts of life that are ruled by order and structure, while the Dionysian rituals are more connected with emotion and chaos.
Working in Banquets it’s become clear to me that this is absolutely true. During the day, these employees of a snack food company I won’t name were in meetings, classes, and training sessions. But at night they had their karaoke, they had their alcohol, and they were ready to get the party started. It was time to let out all the excess energy they had been bottling up all day.
Mass amounts of alcohol decrease people’s inhibitions. Everyone knows that. Unfortunately, for most, mass amounts of alcohol do not operate as a magical elixir that increases singing talent.
Here’s a question: Why is it that the worst singers are always the most eager to participate in karaoke? Some dumb guy will run up without hesitation and sing an ear-stabbing rendition of Sweet Home Alabama. Then there’s the woman whose friends are all pestering her to get up and sing, but she doesn’t want to… and when she finally does, her version of RESPECT is the best performance of the night.
With half an hour left to go before the end of the party, these clowns from a major snack food company I’m not going to name were really having fun. It got down to about ten people left in the room, and the same ten people kept coming up for karaoke over and over again. A terrible quartet did Friends in Low Places, and once again I let out a victory shout for my correct prediction. A man with no sense of rhythm slaughtered Margaritaville. A big guy with some spazzy yet surprisingly physical choreography sang Black Water. Only his version sounded like this: “Lika hearrrrsm funnnkidixielan, prrrmama takmm bythehnd, bythehndhnd, takmm bythehndhnd, bythehndhnd, takmm bythehndhnd, takmm bythehandhnd…”
The table where Mr. Hot Wings Lover sat consumed so much beer, if you laid their empty bottles end-to-end they would have encircled the planet, or at least the lobby.
Finally it was midnight. Time to close the bars and clear the room. One guy asked if we could bring him a few more beers. I laughed in his face. No, I didn’t, but I really wanted to. As the people from the major snack food company I’m not naming left to stumble around in search of their hotel rooms, I wondered… What’s going to give them the most trouble tomorrow morning? Possibly the hangovers? Or the many, many hot wings they ate. Or the memory of their coworkers’ really, really bad singing.
Hang on… Why am I not naming the snack food company? All this stuff really happened. It’s not like Frito-Lay could sue me or anything. Then again, it’s best to be on the safe side. So I’m not going to mention their name.
Comments on this post are closed. |
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| I think that turned out more bitter than I originally intended. Oh well. |
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| Stupid drunks. Although, I've always wanted to karaoke. |
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| Man, all of those songs should be on the karaoke no-no list. The top three of that execrable list are "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd; "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zepplin and "American Pie" by Don McLean, because all of them are TOO DAMN LONG and overplayed. Every time I do karaoke, I always hear the songs you mentioned--why do people always choose the same boring songs? |
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| I would answer that question by saying those songs are familiar to people... but the fact that they rarely get them right eliminates that theory. |
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I think I might be guilty of singing "Friends in Low Places" a few years ago, but at least I wasn't under the influence of anything at the time. So I think it was at least decent.
I do have many fond memories, however, of inebriated high school students butchering songs at the Christmas dances in Uvalde. That was always fun. |
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Last night we had Nationwide Insurance, and they had the same karaoke party package. Here's my observation: Nationwide Insurance people are just as bad at singing as Frito-Lay people, but they're less obnoxious.
And it was pretty funny when the guy and his wife did "You Can't Touch This" and he started interjecting, "Nationwide is on yo' side!" at various places in the song. |
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| The thought of doing karaoke scares me to death. It would be just one more entry on the vast list of things that people can dog me for. Then again, alcohol is a very persuasive substance. I have witnessed many things that alcohol + human has accomplished. Dancing half naked on scaffolding, an unmentionable twinke incident and half karaoke renditions of Fiona Apple's "Criminal" captured on tape...just to name a few. By the way, I have done none of those things. What I have done is not mentionable...but they were funny in retrospect...at least to others... |
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| We did karaoke for my bachelorette party and it just so happened that there was a bachelor party at the same place that night. We ended up having a competition between our two groups and in the end, our grand finale was a performance of "Hey YA!" with the bachelor party singing lead vocals and our party doing back up singing and dancing. I didn't think I had ever seen anything so funny in my life...until the bachelor picked up a stand up poster of George W. Bush and started dancing and singing with it. I think seeing the president do karaoke would be hilarious. |
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| Didn't he say once his favorite song is "Wake Up, Little Suzy" by the Everly Brothers? I could see him karaoke-ing that. |
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