So sometimes I get confused easily. Ok, ok, you're right, all the time. When I shake my head you hear a rattling sound. I got confused by the Rickshaw after I walked in... that is, after navigating through the crowd of smokers blatantly violating the 25 foot rule and blocking the door with a football huddle of tobacco smoke, raspy voices and bad breath.
At the first table by the door, lo and behold, a crowd of Yelpers. I managed my surprise well; one of the crowd had set up an event here. The room is long and thin, like my nose, with several tables lining either side, and what I thought was a big mirrored wall along the right wall over the tables. Imagine my surprise when my reflection in the mirror looked just like an older woman singing karaoke!
Me, thinking to myself: "Whoah, this is like Disneyland! How'd they do that?!"
Me, shaking head: *rattle rattle*
Me, accidentally saying out loud: "Oh, that's not a mirror."
Table of Yelpers: "What the f*$@% are you talking about Will?"
Yes, beware when you're having a conversation with me. You may actually be listening to me having a conversation with myself and sharing some of it out loud. And this is before I have anything to drink.
Multiple choice test time: So, I'm standing in a Chinese Karaoke restaurant, with a full bar along the back wall, and what I realize are multiple tables of Yelpers and other buzzed fun people. And no mirrors. I haven't eaten. What's the first thing I should be doing?
A) Ordering food
B) Ordering drinks
C) Greeting friends
D) Choosing a song to sing
If you chose B) Ordering drinks, you were fricken wrong man. Sorry! LOSER! D) Choosing a song to sing, of course. Gotta get your name in there and pop the evening's Karaoke cherry and stamp any shyness and embarrassment into the ground, early. That's the trick. That's my trick. Now you know why I'm such a moron in public.
I searched for my favorite warm up: Black Crowe's "Hard to Handle" but couldn't find it (they have it, just not in the book I looked in). I opted for "Boys are Back In Town" by Thin Lizzy, with Duran Duran's "Rio" as my follow up. Then I C) Greeted friends, followed by B) ordered drinks and lastly A) ordered pot stickers and some beef fried rice. Or as my buddy Chang from 3rd grade used to say, "Beef Flied Lice!" I miss that guy. He used to wear at least one piece of his Cub Scout uniform to school daily, regardless of whether we had a Cub Scout meeting that day or not. A medal, his hat, the scarf, the socks.... Awesome. You could get away with that kind of shit back in 3rd grade, before you had any concept of what being cool meant. In my opinion, 7th grade was the beginning of the end. Suddenly everyone was so damned concerned about what everyone else thought, they started editing themselves. It took me 10 years or so to get back to not giving a damn... or at least... as close as I've been since.
Karaoke helps with that kind of mental un-brainwashing. Here you are, standing in front of a crowd of people, wailing like a banshee to a song you probably only know the chorus of. Everyone's looking at you. You're shy. You're embarrassed. Maybe your zipper is open. Maybe you drool by accident, or spit a little. Maybe you belch into the mike, or fart. Maybe you sing completely out of tune or your voice cracks. Maybe you dance around stupidly and lose your balance.
You have a choice: do you laugh at yourself and do it anyway, and discover that people actually respect you more for giving it your best? Or do you sit at your table, paralyzed by fear, the voices and looks and sneers of those assholes back in junior high school making fun because you took a risk and it backfired weighing down on your mind?
Well, if it's the latter, then hook up with some Yelpers and go sing some Karaoke and break out of that shell, because if ever there's a crowd who will like you more for being a dumb-ass, it's them.
I'm a prime example.
I couldn't be more of a dumb-ass, and people *keep inviting me* to do shit with them. Does that mean they're a bunch of dumb-asses too? Well... maybe. You gotta come out to find out. :)
The potstickers were pretty tasty. They were huge. Like bigger than my ear. The plate of Beef Flied Lice was enormous and, though a bit greasy, tasty as well. Drinks were strong and served up by a really cool bartender named Mandy (I think? Mindy? Something like that).
The Karaoke Queen was a great singer, and gave great compliments after performances. And the non-yelp crowd was pretty cool too, cheering and applauding regardless of the spitting/drooling/farting/falling/screeching coming from the stage area.
Honestly, I can't really think of anything I didn't like about this place. Plentiful parking. Strong drinks. Cheap food. Karaoke. My only problem with it is it's in North Bumblefuck somewhere, but I can't deduct stars just because I decided to live in the 'hood down in South Seattle, now, can I? read more