11 posts tagged “kttd”
Well that happened.
The Eighth Annual Karaoke to the Death VIII went into the books about 40 hours ago, but its historical significance will reverberate for years to come. To paraphrase something I heard in some shitty movie one time, this wasn't the end. It wasn't even the beginning of the end. But it was the end of the beginning.
Early in the evening, long before the singing got underway, I gazed out over the sea of KttD fans and competitors thronging the dismal Rock It Grill. I beamed and remarked to Vrabel that this was how responsible adults must feel when they see their children foraying out into the world. Eight years after a small band of tuneless interlopers crashed a townie-infested karaoke bar to settle a bet, the KttD community had descended on the Rock It like a conquering army, girded for combat.
Before our tough-but-fair DJ "Slam" had even arrived, it was clear that this year was going to be something special. Despite the conspicuous absences of former KttD Champs Soo Doh Nim, Doc Paradox and "Lord" Bill Ramsey, the field was, by far, the deepest ever, comprising a murderers row of tone-deaf anti-melodic hacks committed to winning KttD glory, no matter what toll they exacted on the hearing and sanity of the assembled masses.
I won't spend too much time rehashing the performances. In addition to the official writeup, I'd commend readers to Cap'n Crunch's extensive, pen-and-paper generated not-quite-live blog and Jason P's stunning outsider's take on competition.
Suffice to say, what we witnessed was jaw-dropping. No fewer than four contenders could have won, and won not only KttD VIII, but any previous KttD, save for the legendary KttD III. The performances by Emma Peel, Peter, newcomer Matyas and eventual winner Aussie Bob were the sort of musical abortions that make you question whether you want to go on living. When a local townie offered her badly inebriated boyfriend a sex act in exchange for singing along with Bob, he declined, somehow sensing through a haze of Miller Lights Lites and vocational school education that there were some lows to which even he should not sink. This was beyond bad singing. It was a polytonal sort of un-singing that had the power to deeply affect listeners' moods.
It was also the new face of KttD.
For years now, the winds of change have been blowing. When Hotrod and I started KttD, we just went up there and sang whatever crappy song came to mind. In the years that followed, we improved our research methods and training regimens, but at its core, KttD remained the same. The winner was the one who chose the lousiest song and sang it the worst. Now though, it's no longer enough to be a bad singer. You have to be a NON-singer in order to have any hope of winning this competition. The new KttD thoroughbreds are miserably tone deaf and wildly uncomfortable on stage. These savants can take any song and make it a bad one, regardless of training.
I thought I had a doozy on my hands this year with "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother." And I feel certain I sang it poorly, but I didn't come close to factoring in the final voting. Could I have done worse? Sure. In retrospect I probably should have gone with something in a higher register, where I've enjoyed most of my past success. That's an oversight I can correct in KttD IX. But what I'm beginning to wonder is whether even my theoretical "worst" performance would be bad enough to win in this modern era of KttD. I'm still as bad as I ever was, but as the stature of KttD has grown, so too has the quality of the competition. I'm starting to come to grips with the fact that maybe I just don't suck enough.
With the Eight Annual Karaoke to the Death VIII fast upon us, the editors at Dabysan in Hammersmith Palais thought it would be a good time take a closer look at some of the main competitors: their strengths, weaknesses and potential obstacles to taking home Lord Ramsey's Cup.
What makes Hotrod great? Preparation, effort and a steely will to win. Hotrod's reedy, tremulous voice is certainly bad, but not the worst KttD patrons are likely to hear. His wooden stage presence, sweaty delivery and sickly pallor paint an ugly picture, but is not as morbidly off-putting as say Cap'n Crunch or Soo Doh Nim. But Hotrod has always made up for whatever deficiencies he may possess by simply outworking everyone else. Nobody watches more game tape, nobody reviews and discards more possible songs, nobody practices as hard and nobody prepares themselves with as much vigor (think Clubber Lang in Rocky III). It's pretty much a given that when KttD rolls around, Hotrod will be there, ready to stand and deliver. Competitors who aren't ready to compete may as well not show up at all.
Strengths: There's a reason why Hotrod is the only two-time champion in KttD history. He's got all the tools, and more importantly, all the desire, to win every time he gets on stage. Nobody puts their bad voice and nervous stage presence together with really terrible songs better than Hotrod. And word from Hotrod's inner circle is that he is eager to avenge last year's embarrassingly decent performance with something for the ages. Hotrod's larger-than-life presence looms large over KttD, and under the right circumstances he could easily become the first three-time champion on February 17th.
Weaknesses: It almost seems unfair to call them weaknesses. Hotrod is still as bad as he's always been, and that badness was enough to earn him two World Championships of bad karaoke. It's not that Hotrod has developed weaknesses, so much as it is that the new wave of KttD competitor is like nothing the bad singing world has ever before witnessed. Facing a murderer's row of tone-deaf musical butchers, Hotrod needs to work twice as hard every year, and at some point, one has to question whether any amount of work will be enough. The KttDing world will have to wait and see what Hotrod has up his sleeves this year.
With the Eight Annual Karaoke to the Death VIII fast upon us, the editors at Dabysan in Hammersmith Palais thought it would be a good time take a closer look at some of the main competitors: their strengths, weaknesses and potential obstacles to taking home Lord Ramsey's Cup.
KttD co-founder Dabysan steps up to KttD's stage carrying a lot of disadvantages. A hyper-extrovert, Dabysan never met a stage he didn't like. If you haven't heard about his love of performing, wait five minutes and he'll probably tell you about it, along with anything else that might be on his mind. If you time his infrequent pauses for breath just right, you may even get a chance to respond. So the palpable, squirming sort of discomfort that plays such a critical role in so many great KttD performances simply isn't a part of Dabysan's playbook. Making matters worse, in certain limited lower registers, Dabysan's singing voice can actually be borderline pleasant, as Akaijen likes to gleefully point out. Given the current state of play in the KttDing world, with new tone-deaf introverts casting their hats into the ring every year, it's reasonable to ask if the sport Dabysan helped create may be passing him by.
Against that impressive slate of negatives, Dabysan weighs in with just one enormous asset -- volume. If KttD was conducted without the benefit of amplified sound, Dabysan would win every time. What Dabysan lacks in discordance, he makes up for with sheer sonic impact. When Dabysan gets his voice around a particularly ambitious high note, the townies in the way back look up from their pool cues and take notice. Armed with the right song, Dabysan can deliver a performance that inflicts real physical pain on his vict...er...listeners. He proved it in KttD V when he swept all competitors with bone-chilling interpretation of Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now," and through the years he's consistently tallied votes with his piercing performances of the greatest hits of Boston, the Bee Gees and Spandau Ballet. The big question for Dabysan is: will his one-dimensional attack -- strong as it is -- be enough to conquer a new breed of KttD competitors, who are transforming the sport every year into something new and altogether more wretched.
Strengths: Raw power. Dabysan's voice is an impressive instrument, and really not in a good way. It's something that people remember, the way people remember childhood traumas. With his out-sized delivery, Dabysan will always have a puncher's chance to win Lord Ramsey's Cup.
Weaknesses: KttD audio chronicler Vanna (who's audio posts are a must listen for any true KttD fan) once remarked to Dabysan, "when I heard you on tape it was sooooooooo much worse than I remembered it in person, but when you're up there, you're having so much fun, its easy to forget how bad you suck." There's the rub for Dabysan. In a competition that trades on humiliation, a congenital lack of shame may ultimately be a fatal flaw.
With the Eight Annual Karaoke to the Death VIII fast upon us, the editors at Dabysan in Hammersmith Palais thought it would be a good time take a closer look at some of the main competitors: their strengths, weaknesses and potential obstacles to taking home Lord Ramsey's Cup.
Not much is known about Aussie Bob, but what is known is enough to be worrisome to other KttD hopefuls. Painfully shy, Bob's sole KttD performance came way back in KttD V, when he delivered a stunningly atonal, unmusical rendition of "Patience" by Guns 'n Roses. The cards were stacked against him from the outset. As a neophyte, Bob would have to battle the cynicism of a hard-bitten KttD crowd. Guns 'n Roses is a terrible KttD choice, given that Axl's keening screech isn't terribly difficult to mimic. And to top things off, Bob knew none of the words outside of the chorus, meaning that for most of the song he was just standing there, silent, trying unsuccessfully to catch up with the teleprompter. Yet for all that, something in Bob's performance arrested the attention of the KttD faithful.
Like reigning KttD Champ Emma Peel, Bob is truly, utterly, irretrievably tone deaf. Tone. Deaf. Can't hear or replicate tones. In a a word (or rather two words): tone deaf. As you may imagine this is a pretty stunning advantage in a bad singing competition. Whatever Bob tries to sing comes out in the same repellent monotone. Awful. And if that wasn't enough, Bob is a super-introvert. It's pretty profoundly clear that he has zero desire to be up on that stage, sucking as badly as he knows he does. Suffice to say, if Bob could bring these twin tools to bear in a concerted bad singing effort, there's know telling what he might do.
The twist in all this, is that nobody really knows how badly Bob really wants to win. This chronicler questions whether he even wants to participate, or if he is doing it to please/humor his svengali/wife Akaijen. When Bob failed to garner substantial votes in KttD V, Akaijen was outraged, insisting that Bob's rancid pipes should have carried him to victory. She even went so far as to accuse KttD V Champ Dabysan -- who's honor is beyond dispute -- of tanking. Akaijen vowed revenge, and now after two years of exile in Holland, she means to have Lord Ramsey's Cup on her mantle by any means necessary. A musician and singer of some repute, Akaijen's only chance to hoist bad karaoke's highest crown is through her pupp...er...husband Aussie Bob. We've heard reports that she's training him in a super-secret Soviet-era facility, pumping him full of horse steroids and shouting Maoist invective in his ears 17-hours a day.
Strengths: Tools, tools tools. Bob has them all. Not many people can bring true tone deafness to bear on the KttD stage. Bob can. And discomfort? Bob has it in spades. Bob also comes packaged with one of the most cunning, ruthless conditioning coaches the KttDing world has ever known in Akaijen. If you were to genetically engineer a KttD competitor, he'd look (and sound) an awful lot like Bob.
Weaknesses: We'll just have to see if his head is in the game. Bob has all the natural skills you could want in a bad singer, but when it comes time to step up to that none-too-clean microphone, natural (lack of) talent will only take you so far. To get up and sing a bad song, badly, with gusto, in front of a bar full of marines and surly townies requires a certain inner fortitude and passion to be the best*. Does Bob have it? Only time, and KttD VIII will tell.
*worst
With the Eight Annual Karaoke to the Death VIII fast upon us, the editors at Dabysan in Hammersmith Palais thought it would be a good time take a closer look at some of the main competitors: their strengths, weaknesses and potential obstacles to taking home Lord Ramsey's Cup.
Cap'n Crunch is a bad karaoketeer with all the the tools needed to be champion. The younger brother of KttD IV winner Soo Do Nim, the Cap'n possess takes all the ...skills... that make Soo so great -- arrhythmic dancing, poor body awareness, tremulous, off-putting voice, smarmy stage presence, etc. -- and adds in a healthy dose of shame and embarrassment that the extrovert Soo could never muster. Take a bad singer of Soo's character and make him just a little bit worse and you should have something special. So why has the Cap'n never hoisted Lord Ramsey's Cup? The answer is as simple as it is sad...The Cap'n is a tanker.
As everyone knows, KttD has only two enduring commandments: you have to try and you have to suck. Tanking -- the act of deliberately singing below your natural ability (such as it is) -- violates the trust relationship between performer and audience and is the gravest sin a KttCompeitior can commit. To hear the Cap'n tell it, his perfidy started innocently enough. Just before he was slated to sing in KttD VI, the Cap'n heard KttD legend Hotrod deliver his now infamous performance of "Since You Been Gone." Intimidated, the Cap'n decided he had to give his offering "a little spice." Pressed by KttJournalist Vanna to explain himself, Crunch admitted that he "tried to suck." It was admission that sent shockwaves through the KttCommunity.
The Capn's treachery was tough for most of the KttFaithful to fathom. Here was a competitor with more natural (in)ability than most could ever dream of, resorting to the cheap and vile parlor tricks of tankery. Many couldn't understand it. Although he returned with an apparently tank-free performance in KttD VII, the stain of tanking doesn't wash off easily, or ever fully disappear. As of today, the Cap'n lifetime ban is under review in the Hague, and he is expected to compete under protest in KttD VIII. The question is whether he can bring his natural ability to bear, shake off the stains of the past, and give the honorable, awful performance we've all been expecting from him since the beginning of his thus-far disappointing career.
Strengths: You name it, the Cap'n has got it. Bad voice? Check. Absurd, uncoordinated dancing? Check. Shyness? Check. Hunger and a talent for inspired song choice (last year he performed "Man...I Feel Like a Woman")? Check and check.
Weaknesses: The Cap'n's "scarlet T" is a heavy cross to bear, and the truth is, he'll have to be more than just bad to sway the minds of many judges. He'll have to be extraordinarily, legendarily awful. The good news for the Cap'n is, if any one can do it, he can.
With the Eight Annual Karaoke to the Death VIII fast upon us, the editors at Dabysan in Hammersmith Palais thought it would be a good time take a closer look at some of the main competitors: their strengths, weaknesses and potential obstacles to taking home Lord Ramsey's Cup.
Chalk it up to a stage demeanor that can only be described as "stomach turning." Something about Soo's smug, simpering smile and his strange, arrhythmic dancing makes him a profoundly off-putting presence up there, and that's before he even opens his mouth. When he does, things go from bad to worse.
What makes Soo different from every other KttD competitor is that Soo thinks he's a good singer. He doesn't really want to win KttD; he wants to be loved. He wants strangers -- preferably young, foreign women -- to tell him how great he is. So like a deranged torch singer, oblivious to his own putridity, Soo struts the stage bellowing out his awful songs, casting come-hither stares at the throngs of white trash as if expecting any moment to be overwhelmed by a fusillade of panties. It's revolting and it's consistent, and no serious KttD competitor would ever take Soo Doh Nim lightly.
Strengths: Soo is the hardest competitor to break down into a statistical model. Taken as simply an amalgam of statistics, Soo wouldn't even rate as a serious KttD competitor. No single facet of his performance is legendarily bad. When he sang "You Can Call Me Al" in KttD IV, it wasn't that far out of tune, but boy was it unpleasant to witness. Truly then, Soo is more than the sum of his parts, a natural competitor, whose real strength may come from the fact that he doesn't think he belongs here.
Weaknesses: It's hard to imagine Soo staying up nights, pondering song selection. Although Soo can sing any song badly, he suffers from a kind of complacency unique to the truly (un)gifted. In the modern KttD era, the performances get worse every year, and Soo will have to do more than just fall back on his considerable (lack of) talent if he wants to reclaim the bad-singing world's greatest prize. Perhaps even more troubling, though, was Soo's inexplicable decision in 2007 to openly campaign for Lord Ramsey's Cup from the stage during a musical interlude in his song. It shattered the fourth wall and violated the unwritten compact between KttD competitor and spectator. Soo will have to put that incident well behind him to have any chance for glory at KttD VIII.
With the Eight Annual Karaoke to the Death VIII fast upon us, the editors at Dabysan in Hammersmith Palais thought it would be a good time take a closer look at some of the main competitors: their strengths, weaknesses and potential obstacles to taking home Lord Ramsey's Cup.
From the moment Emma first stepped onto grand KttD stage, bad karaoke experts knew that they were witnessing something special. Although her early, probing attempts at earsplitting karaoke lacked focus (Emma would often giggle and give up halfway through songs) her lack of talent was palpable, and frankly a little frightening to the KttD old boy's club. Emma's atonal quality and strange, leaden "dancing" were uncomfortable to watch, and it was pretty clear that if she ever put those qualities together with a well-chosen song, she'd be a force to be reckoned with.
In 2007, the stars aligned. As early as 2006, Emma decided to get serious about her KttD career. Motivated by a passion to break the KttD gender barrier, Emma trained, did her song-selection homework and arrived at President's Day Weekend 2007 a finely honed bad-karaokeing machine. As if that didn't bode ill enough for the other competitors, Emma was actually barred access to the arena on her first attempt, and had to drive an hour through icy conditions to fetch her ID. It was as if the universe had decided to poke an already hungry, agitated tigress with a stick.
The results were predictable. Emma got up and absolutely mangled Phil Collins wretched "Sussudio" in a performance for the ages. You'll never know how many times Collins repeats that lame chorus until you hear Emma's...interpretation of the song. It was the kind of thing that makes you wish you were dead. Like all great KttD performances, it had the effect of making spectators profoundly uncomfortable. Emma won handily, despite a strong push from KttD IV champ Soo.
Emma walks into KttD VIII with all the tools to become the sport's first ever repeat champion, permanently solidifying her role as First Lady of Bad Karaoke.
Strengths: Emma is tone deaf. Now, "tone deaf" is a term that gets tossed around pretty glibly, especially in KttD circles, but it's actually a pretty rare condition. The inability to properly replicate a tone (a deficiency shared by all true KttD contenders) is not the same thing as a gross inability to hear the difference between one tone and another. For Emma, one note is much the same as another, and it shows in her delivery. While other contenders warble in and out of tune throughout their performances, Emma picks one rotten note and sticks with it, for minutes on end. It's impressive, and not in a good way. Also, Emma really doesn't like being up there. Although one of the more naturally extroverted members of the KttCommunity, Emma does not like to embarrass herself, which contributes to a palpable sense of discomfort when she's on stage. Taken together, her unique (lack of) skill set makes her a fearsome competitor, and a perennial KttD favorite.
Weaknesses: For Emma it's all mental. When she's on, nobody can stop her. Which begs the question: Which Emma Peel will we see on President's Day weekend? The focused, driven Emma who scattered competitors like wheat before a scythe in 2007, or the distracted, not-fully-committed Emma who was either unable or unwilling to bring her full potential to bear in previous years. Some speculate that her year with Lord Ramsey's Cup has softened the champion and sapped her natural competitiveness. Fans of the sport hope that's not true, and that we'll see Emma rise to her full capacity in 2008.
ALEXANDRIA February 18 -- The world of atrocious karaoke has a new queen today. Behind a curdling rendition of Phil Collins' "Sussudio," Emma Peel cruised to a landslide victory in the Seventh Annual Karaoke to the Death VII, becoming the first-ever woman to hold bad singing's highest honor.
In the mode of Jackie Robinson or Billy Jean King before her, Peel didn't just break KttD's longstanding gender barrier -- she shattered it -- winning by the second-highest margin of votes ever tallied in the contest's storied history.
"Susan B. Anthony was a ninny," the ever-modest Peel said following her win. "I hope women the world over recognize just what I've done for them here today. The all-male KttD hegemony is dead. Long live the queen!"
Peel's historic performance helped to salvage a KttD that witnessed weak offerings by usually reliable competitors and was almost irretrievably marred by a personnel scandal. Still, when the cigarette smoke had cleared, and the last drunken townie had shambled off, his knuckles scraping along the frosty concrete, it was clear that Peel's putrescent performance had transcended all challenges and challengers.
"Lord that was bad," a dispirited KttD I and KttD VI Champion Hotrod said before relinquishing Lord Ramsey's Cup to the triumphant Peel. "Her song choice was just inspired. I never realized how many times that inane, droning chorus repeated itself until I was forced to listen to Peel caterwauling it on what seemed like an infinite loop. I don't know if I'll ever get that sound out of my head."
KttD V Champion Dabysan was equally emphatic. "Awful. That was just, really…awful. I mean we're all bad singers here, but she's completely tone deaf. I thought we were going to have a riot on our hands after she hollered 'Su-su-su-dio' for the 23rd time."
Added Hotrod: "And what was that dance she was doing? Her torso and feet never moved, just her knees bobbing along for however many millennia that wretched song lasted."
Thanks in part to the aforementioned staffing scandal, the KttD VII got off to a slow start. Before Dan M. could kick things off with the first song of the competition, the KttField had to wait nearly an hour as non-competitors from the "surly townie" population gobbled up precious time with their banal renditions of insipid country songs.
Although observers credited Dan for his willingness to sing in the dreaded number one slot for the second year running, his sophomore performance of Mrs. Robinson wasn't markedly worse than his lukewarm rookie rendition of Cheap Trick's epic "I want you to want me" in KttD VI. Odds-makers had Dan as a 36-1 underdog going into the competition, and from the first quiet, occasionally melodic strains of the non-offensive Simon and Garfunkel standard, it was easy to see why. He wouldn't factor in the final voting.
The first real surprise came when KttD co-founder and reigning KttChampion Hotrod took the stage for what would end up being his first and only song of the night. A giant of the sport and guaranteed first-ballot hall-of-famer, Hotrod has been responsible for some of the most execrable displays of vocal pyrotechnics ever inflicted on a KttD audience. From his sickly, squeaking voice, to his nonexistent vocal "range," to the palpable sense of discomfort he exudes when onstage, Hotrod is a bad singing thoroughbred, capable of creating a stampede for the exits at any moment.
It was shocking, therefore, when, from the opening strains of Journey's "Open Arms," he was mostly on key, listenable and at times even borderline pleasant. His voice cracked a little toward the end, but by then the crowd had joined in, creating the dreaded "sing-along-effect" which has sunk many a KttD performance. The disappointment was clear on his face from the moment he left the stage.
After a brief, shouted exchange with his longtime consigliere Vanna, there was widespread speculation of brewing dissent in the Hotrod camp, but Vanna played down the blowup. "He's fine, just letting off a little steam. When a really bad singer like Hotrod delivers an inexplicably listenable performance when it counts the most, you have to expect a little intensity on his part. I have absolute faith that he'll redeem himself with his next song." Vanna, who performed herself for the first time in KttD VII, failed to garner any attention from the judges with her stirring, but more-or-less on-key rendition of the Scorpions classic "Rock You Like a Hurricane."
Taking the stage immediately after Hotrod was another KttD legend. Despite being hampered both by his unwillingness to abide by the KttD substance abuse policy ("abusing substances is highly encouraged") and by his congenital lack of anything resembling shame, Dabysan won KttD V through sheer force of volume and sonic dissonance.
But for all of his natural inability, Dabysan never really put it together at KttD VII. His song choice was bad enough (Color Me Badd's I Wanna Sex You Up) and his voice was as poor as usual, but he clearly didn't have enough of a handle on the material to really belt it out with his usual gusto. As KttD approached, observers opined that Dabysan's decision to move his training site to the Bahamas in the week leading up to the event was a mistake. Indeed, Dabysan came in soft and out of shape. Although he managed a couple votes in early straw polls, Dabysan finished way out of the running.
The first performance worthy of KttD's name came courtesy of KttD II Champ Doc Paradox and his bilious rendition of Alphaville's already atrocious "Forever Young." Paradox crooned his way though the awkwardly paced 80s synth-schlock, failing miserably to reach the song's lofty vocal register. Although nowhere near the standards of his eardrum-puncturing rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody in 2003, it was a bad song, and one that finally began to tickle the voters' interest.
El-Cap-E-Tan kept up things on the uptick with his own poor rendition of Shania Twain's "That Don't Impress Me Much," which, if not worthy of a win, was at least sufficiently lousy to begin to wash away the stains of his notorious tanking incident in KttD VI.
The real gems of the night though came one after another when Peel and the Capn's elder brother Soo Doh Nim took the stage back-to-back. Peel shocked and sickened the crowd with her truly atonal singing of Phil Collins vacuous, inexplicable hit song. The dance floor cleared. Surly townies got surlier. The bar grew strangely silent, waiting for the interminable song to end.
In the wake of Peel's display, handicappers openly questioned whether anyone would be able to mount a real challenge, but KttD IV Champion Soo was up to the test. Combining the best of his arrhythmic dancing "style" and his singularly unpleasant voice, Soo ruthlessly mangled Carly Simon's "The Spy Who Loved Me." Indeed, had he not played to the crowd toward the end of the song with is brash pronouncements that the "cup is mine" he may have mounted a real challenge for the championship. Such knowing winks are generally frowned upon in the KttD community, where the watchword is humiliation.
The only other real challenge to Peel came from surprise newcomer Allison K., who delivered a shockingly bad and decidedly earnest rendition of Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road." Allison didn't once look at the monitor during Springsteen's epic dirge, closing her eyes and signing the dense, inaccessible string of lyrics from memory. She wasn’t quite bad enough to challenge for the cup, but observers agreed that she'd be one to watch in the future.
From then on out Peel only had to fend off a forgettable rendition of Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again" from perennial tanking suspect Mwanga on her way to final victory.
The staffing scandal that threatened to undermine the competition came in the form of what KttD officials described as the "Worst. Karaoke. DJ. Ever." Sporting a New York Yankees cap and a faded blue t-shirt tucked into his high water Wranglers, the hems of which dangled precariously over his gleaming white sneakers, the DJ stacked the song list with his friends, effectively preventing any KttCompetitor from singing a second song. One casualty was that reigning champ Hotrod had no opportunity to bring it all home with his plan to belt out "Gloria" by Laura Branigan.
A typically diplomatic Hotrod was cautious in his assessment of the situation. "That guy is the biggest douche in Christendom. I hope he gets hit by a bus on his way home."
The KttD Competition Committee has empanelled a blue ribbon commission to study the incident. By May the commission will issue its findings on how to ensure that future events are not marred by similar staffing problems. Although seen by some a last resort, paid assassination squads have not yet been ruled out as an option.
Excelsior!
I've gotta say, I'm a little bummed that I'm going to miss out on all all the trash-talking and Vanna's continued works of audio genius in the lead up to the Seventh Annual Karaoke to the Death VII. Unfortunately I don't think my super-secret training facility is equipped with Internet access (and if it is, I don't expect to kill myself looking for it).
This is a picture from the beach deck of the yoga retreat in the Bahamas where I'll be spending the next week. It's going to be rougher than it looks though. One of the days it's supposed to dip into the low 70s. I promise to send all of you warm thoughts.
I'm looking forward to being the most tanned KttD champion ever.
Excelsior!
For the past few weeks, Hotrod and I have been touting our annual bad singing contest, the Seventh Annual Karaoke to the Death VII. Many of you plan to be in attendance. For those who haven't yet committed to coming, I'm informed that plane fares to DC are quite reasonable in February, and know for a fact that Hotrod: a) loves people, especially those he doesn't know and b) is always happy to lodge a few more gentle souls at his palatial estate. So quit lurking around here and go book a flight.
In recent posts, we've devoted a great deal of digital ink to recalling past glories, and this is appropriate, for they are legion. We still haven't gotten around to recapping the performance that gave Lord Ramsey's Cup its name, perhaps because its the sort of thing you want to retell in hushed tones to family and loved ones, perhaps around a campfire. There are many more wonderful stories to tell, and tell them we will, but this post is not about KttD's many triumphs.
For every great good in the universe, there is an equal and opposite force of evil. As transcendent as KttD is, even it cannot escape this inexorable natural law. As co-chair of the competition committee, the event-planning committee, the board of directors, the principal shareholders and the rules committee, I have been honored to play a role in creating the level KttD playing field we all enjoy. I drafted the substance abuse policy ("abusing substances is strongly encouraged") and engaged in the great debate over whether to institute an outright ban on songs by Queen (we haven't...yet).
But at the core of all the rules for KttD is one simple principle: no tanking.
"You have to try" and "you have to suck," are the two great commandments of KttD. There will never be a third. "Tanking" -- which for our purposes describes the act of singing beneath one's natural ability to curry additional favor with the judges -- is, to KttD, what steroids, corked bats, point shaving, and betting against your own team are to other sports. It is a cardinal sin and one not to be soon forgiven. Known tankers carry their shame with them like a scarlet "T" for years to come, and are never again trusted in quite the same way.
At the core of these commandments is an elemental truth about KttD. Beneath all of the glitz and the pageantry, what KttD is about is humiliation. That's why we do it in a public setting, surrounded by surly townies who aren't in on the joke. It's about getting up on a stage, trying your hardest to do something well...and failing. Spectacularly. In front of hundreds of witnesses. When you take the KttD stage, and start mangling that Bee Gees song, we're not laughing WITH you, we're laughing AT you. And through that purifying fire of humiliation there arises, like a phoenix, one champion, who -- shrugging off the remnants of his (or her) shattered dignity -- takes hold of the cup that signifies utter dominance in the world of bad singing. Former champions will tell you that it is a religious experience.
Which is what makes the tanker so odious. The tanker tries to undercut very essence of what makes KttD great. With a wink, he says to the crowd "hey, I'm in on the joke. I'm one of you. I'm just sucking cause its all in good fun. Heck, I'll be the first to laugh right along with you." In one stroke, he cuts at the very heart of the trust relationship between the KttD performer and the KttD audience. If you're not willing to fail miserably, while doing your utmost to succeed, you may not be cut out for KttD. Thankfully, most tankers are easy to spot. You can see the wheels turning as they strain their voice to make unnecessarily discordant tones. Tankers never prosper. So don't do it.
There is an important caveat here. Nothing in the "no tanking" policy prevents a contestant from choosing a song that is morbidly distant from his or her natural vocal "range." It's how I won my championship, and I'm very proud of it. Song selection is at least 50 percent of any winning performance, and contestants should use it to embrace their true rottenness. Just make sure that once you choose your song, you sing it as well as your meager abilities will permit. That's all we ask.
Excelsior!
