#204 Kara-smokey

One of the incidental benefits of the new non-smoking laws is less karaoke. Karaoke, like bowling, seemed to evolve best into a social pastime with the assistance of alcoholic beverages. Alcoholic beverages, in their inhibition-reducing capacity, allowed people to shed the skin of propriety, and also, apparently, forget that they were tone deaf, and jump in front of teleprompters and a drunken crowd to belt out favorites from Neil Diamond to Kid Rock. Oh, wait a minute; Kid Rock does a few semi-karaoke songs of his own doesn’t he? When famous people do karaoke, they call it a cover. When Natalie Cole did duets with recordings of her dead father, I called it necro-karaoke.
The pronunciation of the word karaoke is subject to some regional interpretation. Here in the Northwest we most often employ the kary-okey version. In some parts you hear karah-okey. And I’m told in Japan they say kah-rokey. The word comes from Japan, of course, where such diversions, along with Anime and Jacuzzi-jetted toilets, bespeak a society with too many people and too much attendant psychoses. The first syllable of the word, kara, means void in Japanese and the second syllable, oke, means orchestra. I assume they mean void of orchestra and not band urine although with some karaoke performances I’ve seen it’s hard to tell. Hmm, void of orchestra. Too bad they didn’t use a last syllable that meant good sense. Then the void description would fit most of the folks I’ve seen indulging in this art form.
It’s true that when I first heard the term I assumed it was something yokels in from the sticks did instead of shooting possums— the “okey” in this case referring to the state from which they perhaps originated.
Some have proposed a grading system for karaoke, in which the top grade is A-okey. The middle or average level would be kara-okey-dokey. And those who are slow to pick up the verse are kara-pokey. A would be crooner who needs a cigarette to perform, is known as a kara-smokey―or perhaps that’s the little cocktail wieners he eats before going on. Some people need more than alcohol to reduce their embarrassment. Cocaine-enhanced karaoke? Kara-cokey of course. Those who need mari-jawana to loosen up? Kara-tokey. And who could deny the pleasure of watching a stand up kara-comedian doing, perhaps, an Adam Sandler song and tredding that delicate crowd pleasing line between being kara-jokey and just plain kara-hokey.
In any event all that is coming to an end. The drinkers are staying home with their ashtrays and the karaoke machines are collecting dust in deserted bars, there to crumble away till all their former users no longer karaoke out songs, but simply, cah-roak.
America, ya gotta love it.