For reasons unknown, I somehow managed to land a weekly gig hosting Karaoke night at the local watering hole. Doing training and getting familiarity with the equipment last night (Friday), I quickly got to know the ins and outs of karaoke, how difficult it is to get people to sing, and why it's a bad thing to be playing too much gangsta rap.

The first objective is to avoid the mistakes of previous hosts. Obviously, that means no monopolizing the mic time (outside of one song to warm up the crowd), no making creepy-creepy-gross-guy advances towards the female regulars of the pub (that's how my friends and I got rid of the first guy), and keeping songs with excessive swear words to a minimum (meaning that even though "Ode to My Car" by Adam Sandler happens to be in the song book, we're not supposed to use it).

So, with my one and only song to encourage the crowd to get up and sing, I did "She Bangs" by Ricky Martin, in the style of William Hung (Chinese-American accent and everything). I was actually admonished by one of the wait staff, who felt the need to indicate that we have many patrons of various ethnicities coming into the pub. I had to point out the fact that I'm Chinese. I have done the song about a dozen times in various karaoke bars and this is about the first time anyone's ever called me on it. But, point taken.

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