Wooing the Friendsters

MySpace is now serious in wooing Filipinos from Friendster. Here's why.

Why is "My Way" a Killer Karaoke Song?

I was pondering on this question a long time now being the authority on "karaoke deaths." Now I know why. Claude François, the French pop star, who composed "My Way" was accidentally electrocuted when he tried to fix a broken light bulb while standing in a filled bathtub. The song was actually entitled "Comme d'habitude." So you got the connection there. Death. Electricity. Karaoke.

UK Bars vs US Bars and Pinoy Bars vs Thai Bars

Tunku Varadarajan of Financial Times must have spent a lifetime in bars to share these things (mostly anti-UK pubs):

1. The virtues of the English pub are vastly exaggerated by sentiment and nostalgia. Why are so many named after dead aristos (The Duke of Connaught, Prince Albert)? Many, in fact, have been taken over by big chains, tackied up and renamed The Slug and Lettuce, The Ferret and Firkin or The Farting Wayfarer. Their juke boxes play raucous punk-rock classics of the 1980s. American bars, more often than not, are called ''Bar''. As simple, unpretentious and effective as the country and western music that tends to be the ambient noise.

Ye olde pub was part of the local geography, independent, and run by a local gaffer who knew the local boozers. Today's pubs are managed by young trainees who have bachelor degrees, from Sheffield, in Hospitality Studies. As for service, American bartenders/tendresses are more professional (tipping is an incentive). English pubs tend to be manned by lackadaisical Aussies on their ''gap year'', although now, and not a day too late, more and more pints are being pulled by industrious lasses from Gdansk.

2. It is easier to extract a barman's toenail in an English pub than it is to extract that extra cube of ice for that glass of scotch that barely contains any scotch (see next point). American ice is better, and bars do not ration it as if it were butter in wartime London. The negatives of an American bar include the fact that you get ice with everything, even a Bloody Mary, which should be shaken with ice and then strained. But there's a simple solution to this problem. Just say: ''Hold the ice.'' (While on the subject of cocktails, American bars offer a far greater range of drinks, made with far greater aplomb - especially the great Martini, which you'd never find in a pub.)

3. There is a ''mean sod'' culture in pubs - pint glasses filled to the exact pint-marking on the glass, and not a drop more; bottles that are in those horrid upside-down racks with a plunger gizmo that dispenses exactly one-sixth of a gill (now there's a word!), and not a drop more. I'm all in favour of drinks being measured carefully to achieve accuracy in the proportions of a cocktail recipe, but this is just stinginess. An American barman who poured drinks like an English one wouldn't last a day in his job.

4. There are far fewer ''regulars'' at American bars than in English pubs, ''regular'' being a euphemism for ''appalling bore'', often prone to chippy right-wing views that are ventilated at the drop of a hat (''That Margaret Thatcher, she was more of a man than any of the recent prime ministers''). American bars are more cosmopolitan places, drawing people from all neighborhoods and beyond. They are not local wells from which the people on one block all draw their water. Pubs are essentially front stoops with alcohol. American bars, by contrast, can offer high-stakes contact with fascinating strangers. There is much less swearing, besides, in American bars (despite the occasional mother-****er), and many fewer drunken women than in the English pub, where the bladdered ladette is now a nightly hazard. As for the fauna, plucky American girls are more interesting than dart-throwing Englishmen.

A friend of mine, in a New York bar recently, found a woman in the men's restroom, cheerfully chatting with confused male patrons therein. She just hadn't wanted to wait in line for, as Virginia Woolf would put it, ''a room of one's own''.

5. Two final words in celebration of the American bar: no cider.

The Real Pinoy Bars

1. Remember the "Dirtiest Bathroom in Scotland" ? De rigeur in Pinoy niteclubs.
2. There must always be a videoke. It doesn't matter if it's working.
3. Waiters will place ice cubes with their hands and dip their fingers in your soup. How else would they know if the ice is cold and the soup is tepid.
4. Napkin wrapped on the beer bottle makes it ten times more expensive
5. Always demand that your beer be opened in front of you. You don't want to taste "blended beer."
6. Just look at your beer and not your neighbor.
7. Share a seat. Win a visit to the nearest hospital.
8. When you plan to make your GRO drunk, don't order the "ladies drink." This is just Seven Up and salt. Let them order beer.
9. If your GRO's visit to the "Dirtiest Bathroom in Scotland" takes 30 minutes, it means she has another customer.
10. If you hear "My Way" sang twice in a row, leave immediately.

Karaoke with the Dead

At the Manila North Cemetery, no one cares if you sing, "My Way."

Makes Love Just Like a Woman

Choy told me that his favorite karaoke singer of choice is now Bob Dylan. So I told him if he sings, "Just Like a Woman." And lungkot noon, he said. True. The last refrain haunts me:

I just can't fit
Yes, I believe it's time for us to quit
When we meet again
Introduced as friends
Please don't let on that you knew me when
I was hungry and it was your world.
Ah, you fake just like a woman, yes, you do
You make love just like a woman, yes, you do
Then you ache just like a woman
But you break just like a little girl.

Or maybe I told Choy it is because of this:

Karaoke Attack in Seattle

Because we believe that we are the portal for karaoke death, we give you this little incident in Seattle. This guy sings "Yellow" by Coldplay when this woman who drank only one Jagermeister yelled at him and said, "Oh no. Not that song. I can't stand it" then she punched him. Uy, Seattle P-I reported this which is "Wow!" because I used to work there and think of it as the Manila Bulletin of Seattle and I remembered that no one then wanted to report on Pearl Jam's concert at the Dome after many months.

This Karaoke Is For You, Gob

Being a leading quasi-scientist on karaoke murder, I now give you karaoke suicide. No, this is a Slate article by Michelle Tsai on online karaoke. Now you can sing in your own booth and share it with the universe, Gob.
For the rest of us, Butch Perez linked me with this wonderful video of Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed on the Lost Art of Conversation.