FlamingText

No Fun For the Future

    When I showed up at the Sunset Bowl it suddenly occurred to me that I'd forgotten the part of the invitation that specified evening wear, probably because the idea of "dressing nice" to go bowling created too much cognitive dissonance. Once I showed up and realized that the Birthday Girl was wearing a fabulous gown and that others seemed similarly overdressed I remembered and of course felt embarassed at my own lackluster appearance. It's not uncommon for me to feel underdressed but it's never happened to me in a bowling alley before.

    Everybody was standing around in the video game room waiting for a lane to open up. C-Had and Shafty-Shaft were facing off in a fierce Dance Dance Revolution matchup, with Shafty naturally emerging victorious (cause he's got moves for miles, yo.) In the meantime a cluster of us decided to wait in the karaoke bar and enjoy some bowling-pin shaped Cheap Domestic Beers (let 'em buy adspace if they want a namecheck!) and maybe sneak in a quick round of karaoke. Years ago, I lived right across the street from this establishment and so I am no stranger to the Sunset Bowl karaoke, but this time I couldn't help but notice that some things had changed since I’d been a regular patron.

    Presiding over the activities in the karaoke room was a middle-aged man with glasses and a protruding belly who was sporting a polo shirt and a software mullet. When we all sat down at our tables he was in the middle of murdering a song so we assumed he was a fellow bar patron. Usually, not always, but usually people who host karaoke are themselves amateur singers, and they’ll frequently kick the night off with their own renditions of their favorites– I heard a karaoke host in Saskatoon do a creditable version of “Young Guns” by Bon Jovi, for instance, which obviously had been polished to a fine sheen by repeated performances. I’m willing to bet he started off every karaoke night with that song. Sometimes this brand of karaoke host will come back to sing throughout the night, spicing up the standard painful drunken versions of “Summer Lovin” and “These Boots Were Made For Walkin” with their own thrillingly competent vocal stylings. It can provide a welcome respite so long as they don’t abuse their microphone privileges.

But this guy wasn’t one of those. He was all business. He wrapped up his number and started explaining the rules to the gathering crowd. He took a lot longer to do this then I’ve ever heard anybody do before. There were a lot of rules.

“Here at the Sunset Bowl we have the first all computerized karaoke system in Seattle. There are two songbooks in the back there, so be sure when you’re done picking out your selection that you put it back where you found it so other people can have a chance. When you have your song picked out come up here to this computer and log in to select your song. The computer will remember your selection so next time you can just enter your name and it will come right up on the screen!”

    He continued on with further endorsements of the revolutionary new karaoke system that removes those troublesome slips of paper that are evidently the bane of karaoke hosts the world over – at least that’s what I infer given the fact that somebody had seen fit to replace those scraps of paper and accompanying little stubby pencils with this computerized interface. It seemed to basically be designed to eliminate the need for a host altogether, which would have been fine, except that in this case there still was a host who was really spending an awful lot of time explaining the rules of karaoke. I walked up to the computer to log my request, carrying the book with me so I wouldn’t forget the number, and he brought me up short, speaking to me like you’d speak to an elementary student who just talked in class without first raising his hand:
“Please don’t bring the book up here. Put it back on that table back there,” pointing to indicate the table in the corner of the room. He then leaned in to the microphone and repeated for the benefit of everybody.
“Do NOT bring the book up here. We don’t have any room for it up here. Please take it to the back of the room.”

Annoyed, I walked the book back over to its assigned place, borrowed a pen so I could write down the number of the song on a matchbook, and returned to the computer, where Mr. Charisma began explaining how the system works.

“Now enter your first name. And now your last initial. Hit “enter.”
“Now enter the title of the song. Hit “enter.”
“Now it will remember every time that you selected that song. These numbers indicate which version it is, and then this tells it if you need it in a different key.”

    After he told me how to hit “enter” a few more times I returned to my seat, feeling like I’d just enrolled in some kind of remedial keyboard skills class. While I was waiting I ordered a beer in a bottle shaped like a bowling pin. (Ah, beer in a bottle shaped like a bowling pin. It’s not just a cosmetic difference, you know – beer in a bowling pin bottle actually tastes better! It’s been scientifically proven.) I was second in line to sing so I reasoned there was some chance I’d get to sing before our lane was ready. I knew I was second in line because when I’d asked our host how long the line was he’d directed my attention to a screen that had the names of people signed up to sing (all two of them) listed. He then told me how to read the words on the screen (“Over there is the list of people singing. Your name is number two on the list.”) before he sent me back to my seat. He continued on-mike with his description of proper karaoke procedures, interrupting himself periodically to announce when people’s lanes were ready and also to announce that there was a birthday in the bar. This was accompanied by a lame "Happy Birthday!" graphic on the screen, for which he apologized.

“I know it’s not the JumboTron at the Superbowl, but we do our best. First up tonight is Susan! Before Susan sings, I want to inform you all that although there is a floor open over here there is to be no dancing. Do not dance! They will shut us down if there’s any dancing. And now, here’s Susan."

    Susan took the mike and talked over the intro to “Dead or Alive.,” giving a shout-out to her peeps and saying she hoped she’d do alright because there sure seemed to be a lot of rules. She belted out the crowd-pleaser to accompanying hoots from her table and then it was over. The host announced that Sonya’s lane was ready and the people at our tables began to file out of the little cocktail bar. I figured I might as well sing the song I had cued up (“Tempted” by Squeeze, if you must know), given that it’s a three minute song and I was up next. No such luck. Mr. Charisma was busy walking a line of other would-be karaoke singers through the process of hitting the “enter” key. A minute or two passed, then a few minutes more. I was sort of hovering near the mike, thinking that at any moment the guy would hit “play” or “enter” or whatever button he had to hit to start my song, but there was nothing doing over in his corner. I finally walked up and checked the mike by way of giving a little hint that maybe it might be time to get the show on the road. He walked up to me where I was standing, fixed me with a stern look through thick lenses, and told me
”If there are any explicit lyrics in this selection you are not to sing them. Do you understand?”

    I assured him I'd try my best to rein in my potty mouth and he went back to his little station where he continued to not push play while he lectured a line of drunken young ladies on how this whole karaoke drill went. I waited another minute or two before walking out and going over to meet my friends. I never did get to sing. As I left the bar I patted our host on the shoulder and told him to cancel my song, but really I was patting him on the back because I felt sorry for him for being the worst karaoke host in the world.

    Shoes were rented and beers were purchased and out on the lane I bowled my first frames with less than impressive results. Bowling for me has always been more about wearing the shoes and drinking the beer than about actually knocking pins down and my scores tend to reflect these priorities. From childhood I have a memory of going out for a bowling night with a church group and bowling such a low score that I was awarded a “booby prize.” This turned out to be deceptively named, as it consisted of nothing more than a Kit Kat bar and a round of derisive laughter. In hindsight I’m not sure why a church group got so much enjoyment out of mocking a little kid for being a bad bowler, but I do remember that I ate the candy and shrugged off the ridicule as gamely as could be expected. Replace “Kit Kat bar” with “beer in a bowling pin shaped bottle” and you pretty much have my current attitude towards the sport of bowling.

    Still, I’m competitive by nature and so I do try to roll strikes. And here is where I ran afoul of the newest development in modern bowling: Optical foul lines. Now I really didn’t think anything of it when all the bowling alleys went to computerized scoring systems, because let’s face it, bowling has the most complicated scoring of any sport I know. It’s sort of like the way they figure out Federal budgets: figures are based largely on future projections. We won’t know the real figures until the next round of returns comes in. Like the Federal budget, projections tend to be based on the rosiest possible outcomes, but of course projections don’t mean a damn thing until the last frame is bowled. The best possible game is the one where the final tally is forestalled until the very last frame (just as the best possible budget is the one where the optimistic projections about how much growth the economy will experience are placed far enough in the future that the budget’s authors will be long gone when those projections are revealed to be pure bullshit..) So of course computers are necessary to keep track. It stands to reason. But the optical foul line is a completely different matter. Stepping up to the lane in the first frame after a spare I knocked down eight pins (hey, that’s most of them, right?) only to be informed that I had crossed the line and the shot wouldn’t count. The next time up I was again informed that I had crossed the line and my shot wouldn’t count. Apparently I cross the line a lot; It’s a chronic problem. And I've getting away with it all these years, but now I could see that the party was over.

    It got me thinking of those cameras in intersections that photograph your license plate so the city can automatically mail a traffic ticket to your house. I hear these are big revenue generators for the cities that have adopted them and I can see why, but the whole idea depresses me. One of the great strengths of traffic law that I’ve always appreciated is that the rules are so rarely enforced. People speed every time they get on the freeway, they take illegal turns when nobody’s looking, they ride with dogs and kids in the back of pickup trucks even though it’s illegal. Now in the era of automated enforcement and computerized cars that send a report to your insurance company if you go over the speed limit or turn left too quickly we at last face the real possibility of perfect enforcement of these laws and I don’t think people are ready for it. Imagine if you got a ticket every time you exceeded the speed limit. It would really start to add up.

    And perhaps my recent run-in with the Karaoke Hall Monitor had just put me in a bad mood, or maybe it’s the fact that I’d just finished reading 1984 and I’m still feeling its lingering effects on my psyche, but I just started to get really down thinking about all these machines and machine-like people enforcing every rule, even the most trivial, with unwavering consistency and efficiency. I thought back to bowling in high school: Keeping track of the scores on a slip of paper with a little stubby pencil, eating a pizza and maybe sneaking some beers in the parking lot beforehand, occasionally walking out of the bowling alley still wearing the rented shoes, laughing like we’d just pulled off the crime of the century. I thought about this last bit when I noticed the sign on the exit informing us that taking the rented shoes outside would activate an alarm. And I thought about all the other stupid, pointless and incredibly fun things that I did when I was a teenager and I found myself wondering if the teenagers of today managed to find vacant lots and drainage culverts and rock quarries to hang out in or if they all just spent their time walking up and down the carpeted floors of shopping malls. Did they still make out in cars parked in out-of-the-way places or have all the Inspiration Points in America installed automated Abstinence Enforcement cameras? Do they sneak cigarettes in the park? Beers in the parking lot? Do they still drive too fast on lonely country roads when nobody is looking? And what, if anything, is being done about this?

    In our shining future, karaoke will be a much more efficient and far less frivolous affair. Strict enforcement of applicable liquor laws will insure that no intoxicated or inappropriately-dressed individuals take part. Computer monitors will display helpful messages to singers telling them when they sing off pitch. Lewd or suggestive dancing, which has long been a serious problem in the nation’s karaoke bars, will be a thing of the past. Offensive lyrics will be replaced with more family-friendly ones: No more “Tempted by the fruit of another,” because don’t you think “Eating Campbell’s Soup® with my mother” is less suggestive and better all around? Now that’s a lyric everyone can enjoy! Sure karaoke will be a lot less fun, but people will still do it. They’ll have to. It will be mandatory.

Strictly enforced.

Posted by flamingbanjo at February 8, 2006 06:14 PM