Ultimate

a birthday, college students, and a smattering of regulars. than everywhere else.

I brought along a friend, and after my third Miller High Life, we sang “Jesse’s Girl,” off-key and screeching on the high notes. I did a few high kicks; we were really getting into it, our own little dance party onstage, egged on by everyone else in the room. It was the friendliest place I had been in since Santa’s, the energy both casual and vibrant, and by this point I remembered that all I could hope for was a song going over pretty well or just being fun. At karaoke, perfect continues to be the enemy of good. songs you might not remember but were overplayed on the radio during the past five years. (I counted a shocking 13 Lady Gaga songs.) I saw a woman sing the hypersexual “Pony” by Ginuwine, by herself, interjecting her own expletives. A group of women sang “Goodbye Earl” by the Dixie Chicks, which one of them later explained is a nofail option for women.

I chose Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”; a local aerobics instructor named Em grabbed me by the arm and told me with wide eyes how much she envied my confidence. As I walked out, a woman was singing “I Touch Myself” as the crowd went wild. A road trip took a karaoke enthusiast to The Cats Meow, top, a sprawling two-level karaoke bar in New Orleans, and a parking garage named Ego’s in Austin. from Phoenix but decided I had to stop at a 24-hour karaoke bar in Las Vegas called Dino’s. I arrived at midnight. A sign on its exterior read “The Last Neighborhood Bar in Vegas,” though once inside, a local named Ashley, who was with her husband and a friend, told me that tourists don’t really come to Dino’s. It was lowkey and dark – a stark contrast to the blinking, blaring strip a mile away. Artsy softcore French pornography played on a few screens, and the bar was inset with gambling consoles. People were just being people, not drinking anything by the yard or gambling away their savings.

I sang Fleetwood Mac’s “Silver Springs,” the song I like to sing the most but sometimes hold back from in front of strangers because it’s the opposite of rousing. As the opening bars twanged, I chuckled into the mike and asked, “Are you guys ready to be sad?” Apparently they were. It felt more correct than anything else I had sung since New York, cathartic and allowed. In Las Vegas, you can sing what you like. Ten hours later, I was back on the road, having shaken out all the feelings I could, Los Angeles just a few hundred miles away.