"We’re twenty minutes into the ride and the guy tells me he doesn’t have any money. So, I’m like ‘well, what are you going to do about it?’. He has me bring him to this grocery store; he runs in and shoplifts 20 steaks, and then has me take him to the Vegas Lounge. ‘I can sell them here and get your money’ he says. He goes in, and comes out twenty minutes later with twenty bucks. The fare was like fifty bucks” We walk in silence for a beat, and then he says “I hope that guy’s in here tonight, man”    

And with that we enter the Vegas Lounge, a well lit suburban-looking joint that was, as the white banner outside had promised, having a karaoke night. To the strains of off-key Santana belted forth from a middle aged man staring at the floor– “in the laaaand of milk and honey”, he sings—we find ourselves a seat at the bar and order a round. For the next few hours we sit back and drink heavily and watch karaoke and this is what we see.

Crash Test Dummies –
Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
This was the funniest thing I saw all week, and quickly became a situation where I was laughing out loud, uncontrollably, trying futilely to hide it. First off: why the fuck would you pick this song? Presumably the person had heard the tune before, in which case he was surely aware of its lumbering tempo and somber mood, and yet still thought “Yeahhh.... that will go over great in a room full of intoxicated people!”.

   Granted, the guy was clearly bombed himself, wobbling all over the place, which could have explained his poor song choice. But I don’t care if you’ve been doing shots of rubbing alcohol since 8am: you should still know better. He couldn’t claim ignorance, either; he definitely sort of knew how “MMM MMM MMM MMM” went, so it wasn’t like he jabbed his finger at a random song in the binder and said “lemme do that one”.

   Any familiarity he had with the tune did little good anyway, as his sense of melody and inflection and timing had plainly been decimated by the booze. It was a train wreck: as soon as he started singing, the lyrics on the TV colored up quickly, way ahead of him, forcing him to slur out the rest rapid fire to catch up before the screen changed. So it tumbled out like this: “Ooooonce? there was? This…….kid-who-got-into-an……accident?”

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