Rip-off Blog: "I know I had it coming..."

It's impossible to plagiarize yourself, right? I just felt like posting.

I don't spend much time in bars, but the occasional jaunt to a local watering hole for karaoke with friends is usually a good time--never mind the fact that singing in public to an intoxicated audience once held the spot just below "self immolation" on my list of top ways to ruin a perfectly good evening. Still, it's fun to go just to see what songs your friends will pick. The best ones are those that they clearly regret selecting only four bars in, at which point it's obviously too late. Once you start a song, you have to see it through to the bitter end. That's karaoke law.

My usual strategy is to pick a song that no one in their right mind would boo no matter how badly I slaughter it. The last time I went, I only performed one song: "Folsom Prison Blues." Number one, it's Cash. Nobody dares disrespect Cash. Number two, no offense to the Man in Black, but you can be pretty tone-deaf and still make the prisoner's grumbled mourning sound real. And on top of that it's just a cool song that you really don't hear that often.

As most people know, the song is fictional. Though it's consistent with his image, Cash never served any time in prison--or committed murder, as far as anyone knows. And yet what's the line that invariably evokes the most hoops and hollers in the karaoke joint? No question: "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die."

And I'm thinking, "What's wrong with these people? Cheering on a cold-blooded killing for no reason? Er, wait...I'M the one that picked the song..." Amazing what you'll sing about that you'd never consider doing.

According to Wikipedia, Cash recounted how he came up with the "Reno" line thusly: "I sat with my pen in my hand, trying to think up the worst reason a person could have for killing another person, and that's what came to mind."

Cash wasn't a bad guy. He just seemed to want people to think he was--not unlike the unfortunate incident that brought my night to an early end.

Out of respect for the privacy of those involved, I'll forgo the details. Let's just say that I feel strongly that, while fun has its place, paid performers at nightclubs owe a degree of respect to the patrons they entertain. ...And if defending a young lady's honor compels me to take a bar stool to some Billy Joel wannabe's baby grand, so be it. It's not the first dueling piano bar that's issued me a lifetime ban, and I highly doubt it'll be the last.

"But those people keep a'moving, and that's what tortures me."