{"id":62,"date":"2001-10-24T17:02:38","date_gmt":"2001-10-25T00:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/?p=62"},"modified":"2008-01-04T17:09:33","modified_gmt":"2008-01-05T00:09:33","slug":"international-star-du-karaoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/2001\/10\/24\/international-star-du-karaoke\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;International star du karaoke!&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Wednesday, 24 October: &#8220;I               smoked what?&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I spend most of the day asleep. The events of the last few days, the long trip back to Dublin, the frustrating experience finding last-minute flights to Paris on Friday, and staying out until the wee hours whenever possible (a sweet memory of nightlife in Chicago) have taken a toll on my body, so I engage in the preventative medicine of deep, soothing rest.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m back at the same hostel again, with a private room and the sensible idea of a good night&#8217;s sleep. These ideas only last so long, however. I&#8217;m in the mood to dance and head over to Ri Ra at midnight. I hook up with a couple of people I met on Monday, and meet two more tonight:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Patrice, a Frenchman in his mid-20s who works at a posh restaurant in Dublin<\/li>\n<li>Fiona, studying computer science at Trinity College<\/li>\n<li>Cliona, who works with handicapped children. Her and Fiona grew up together.<\/li>\n<li>Amyric (pronounced Ah-meer-eek), a restaurant manager, also French. Roommate of Patrice.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s last call at Ri Ra. The Frenchmen suggest we all go back to their place, which we do, to smoke &#8220;cigarettes&#8221;. I smoke part of one, and am thirsty just a few minutes later. How about that? Conversations ensue in English, French and Gaelic. It&#8217;s amazing how much of this you can&#8217;t pick up in a few hours.<\/p>\n<p>The clock in the hostel says 5:15am when I return. Michael: 1, Sensible Ideas: 0.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thursday, 25<\/strong><strong> October: &#8220;You&#8217;re from where?&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I move to another room in the hostel, with two twin beds. I have a roommate today &#8212; from Seattle! Specifically, Greenlake He&#8217;s a 21-year-old college student studying computer science at UW. We geek out a bit, and get a big laugh out of the small world situation.<\/p>\n<p>Madonna&#8217;s &#8216;Ray of Light&#8217; accompanies tv and radio ads for Windows XP, which debuts today. The more I try to leave Seattle, the more it screams to be recognized.<\/p>\n<p>Apart from making sure my body is sufficiently caffeinated, nothing else happens tonight.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Friday, 26 October: &#8220;Sinatra *is* the international language!&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ivan meets me at the ticket counter in Dublin on Friday morning, and tells me about his amazing time in Galway, the least important event being singing &#8220;My Way&#8221; with drunken strangers. Such a good time that he only had an hour and a half sleep last night and drove maniacally to Dublin averaging 90mph in 2 1\/2 hours. I&#8217;m so glad I didn&#8217;t have to read about him in the Irish Times Police Beat.<\/p>\n<p>Liverpool Street station in London, our connection between yet another set of airports, is an architectural marvel.<\/p>\n<p>As we land in Paris, it occurs to me that I don&#8217;t know any French. We&#8217;ve got 3 nights at a cheap hotel near the Opera on rue de something-or-other. We&#8217;re now nine hours ahead of Seattle, but that still doesn&#8217;t help them beat the Yankees retroactively. It&#8217;s time to move on now. (Cubs in 2002!)<\/p>\n<p>On our way to forage for food in English, we pass an establishment that boasts karaoke every night!<\/p>\n<p>Dual-priced menus showing the franc and the euro. The euro goes into effect on 1 January 2002 and is so close in value to the dollar that we know exactly how much we&#8217;re being fleeced at the restaurant we eventually choose.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll never drink coffee from a machine in the UK again. Wine is expensive, and damn, it&#8217;s good. No screwtop caps here.<\/p>\n<p>Women and men are very fashion-conscious here, and it looks great on them. Leather is the new denim.<\/p>\n<p>We pass the karaoke bar on the way back. Ivan&#8217;s tired, but I convince him that this is the fair and just thing to do, if only for either the children or the American People<sup>TM<\/sup>.<\/p>\n<p>Hey, everyone&#8217;s singing in French, and the audience is singing along! It reminds me of the time I was at a party a long time ago when the host put on a Garth Brooks CD and everyone knew the lyrics except me and proceeded to sing and I felt like I had entered a Twilight Zone episode or something and wondered if my friends that I thought I knew so well had been replaced with beings from some horrible alternate universe.<\/p>\n<p>Ivan requests &#8220;It&#8217;s Now or Never&#8221;. He gives admirable effort, but the audience seems much more receptive to French songs. Maybe if we sang in *outrageous* French accents?<\/p>\n<p>I get the courage to sing &#8220;Lady is a Tramp&#8221; (apologies to Jeannette, who reigns as the tune&#8217;s owner in the greater Ballard area) in English, and I belt it out as loud, as unapologetically, and as Sinatra-like as I can. This feeling completely overshadows the fact that I paid 9 dollars for a Heineken. I feel a part of Paris now, albeit a miniscule one.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/dscn1100.jpg\" alt=\"Liverpool Street Station.\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/dscn1104.jpg\" alt=\"Ivan\u2019s happy to be on our way to Paris.\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/dscn1105.jpg\" alt=\"On our way to one airport or another.\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"facebook\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/share.php?u=https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/2001\/10\/24\/international-star-du-karaoke\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Share on Facebook\">Share on Facebook<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday, 24 October: &#8220;I smoked what?&#8221; I spend most of the day asleep. The events of the last few days, the long trip back to Dublin, the frustrating experience finding last-minute flights to Paris on Friday, and staying out until the wee hours whenever possible (a sweet memory of nightlife in Chicago) have taken a &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/2001\/10\/24\/international-star-du-karaoke\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8220;International star du karaoke!&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"facebook\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/share.php?u=https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/2001\/10\/24\/international-star-du-karaoke\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Share on Facebook\">Share on Facebook<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mortie.net\/journal\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}