MICROPHONE KILLAH

Last time I wrote about a guy who grabbed my wireless mic (not a sexual metaphor, you pervs) and kept yakking away at the crowd until I turned his power off and convinced him he'd broken the microphone.

(No ... I haven't called him and probably won't. There's no need to keep the joke going at this point. Let him go through life with the guilt of thinking he broke a total stranger's expensive microphone because he had to be the drunken center of attention at a company function. That's the beauty of the prank.)

This past Thursday night we're doing karaoke.

It's a slow, cold January night and we've got MAYBE 30 people in the bar.

This one guy wants to sing karaoke.

Fine. Knock yourself out, Junior.

He sings a few Jackson 5 tunes. He's cutting edge, babe.

Nobody else wants to sing, so I put on regular music.

I put on David Allen Coe's "You Never Even Call Me By My Name" or ... as I refer to it ... "The Drunken Asshole's Mating Call".

Karaoke Boy comes running back up to the DJ booth.

"Lemme sing this, lemme sing this," he squeals. "I love this song."

"It's not the karaoke version," I say. "There's no words on the screen."

"Lemme do it anyway!" he says.

Fine. I've learned to pick my battles in life and if this guy wants to sing along with a song over the microphone, whatever.

The guy has NO IDEA what the lyrics are. He's just shouting out random words that he thinks might be in the song.

"SOMETIMES! USELESS! REMAIN!," he's yelling. "CALL ME! DARLIN DARLIN!"

The song finishes and Karaoke Boy is oh so proud of himself for knowing a quarter of the words and asks the crowd to give himself a big hand.

The crowd responds with silence.

Karaoke Boy then starts doing "Yo, yo, yo" shit that is drunken honky speak for "Look at me, I'm so cool!"

The crowd responds with silence.

Karaoke Boy gives shout-outs to his buddies playing pool who are justifiably mortified that they're being singled out by the drunk.

He then starts rambling about how Madison, Wisconsin is the greatest city in the world. I'm assuming that's where he's from and he didn't just randomly pick the city out without any true merit to receive his dubious award.

I started the next song and ... wouldn't you know it ... Karaoke Boy knows "Sweet Home Alabama" too!!

"BIG WHEEL! TURNIN! CARRY! SEE! KIN!" he screams.

Okay Karaoke Boy. Funtime's over.

I cut his mic off.

He realizes after about 10 seconds that he can no longer be heard over the sound system.

"Awwww dawg," he whines. "Why you go and do that?"

"Awwww dawg," I shoot back. "Because you need to go hang out with your buddies and just sing karaoke songs and not every song I play over the system."

"Dawg ... I love to sing!" he says.

"Then sing karaoke," I retort. "Pick a song out of the book and sing it."

The conversation kept going but what it boiled down to is this ... some people love the sound of their own voice.

And this guy is clearly one of those people.

Finally, the guy accused me of "hating" on him and that he was going to tell my manager.

I think ... hmmmm ... yeah ... I think that's where I lost it with him.

"Dude!" I said loudly. "Go tell my manager! Go tell my manager that I won't let you grab MY microphone and sing along with EVERY song that I play! And make sure you tell them that I suggested that you sing actual karaoke if you're so hellbent on singing and not just shouting random words over the microphone! Because I GUARANFUCKINGTEE you that my manager will be able to tell you've already had way too much to drink and will cut you off from any more alcohol! Do it! DO IT!!!!"

...He put the microphone down and went back to playing pool with his buddies.

I'm thinking that my choice to stay sober on the job is affecting the way I counteract with unruly drunkards.

I take full responsibility for my sober actions.

And I was at this orientation where a bunch of college students (and me) were listening to a guy go over the events of the upcoming week.

And I was sitting next to this girl named Katherine who wasn't the most beautiful girl in the world, but she was cute and in a bikini.

And she said she wanted to be my intern.

Which, according to my dream, meant she wanted to sex me up something fierce.

There was a guy on the left of me, complaining that we were all getting sunburned out here and how were we supposed to have a fun spring break on the beach if we were all sunburned.

I agreed with him and started talking to him, rather than Katherine in the bikini, about the dangers of skin cancer.

My question is ... does that make me gay?

Every time something gets dropped on the floor ... "goddammit".

It was cute at first.

Now I'm trying to correct him.

"Andrew," I'll say. "You pronounce that 'doggonnit'."

"Doggonnit?" he'll ask.

"Yeah. Doggonnit," I'll say.

Thirty minutes later ... dropped toy ... "goddammit".

Great.

My kid's five and he's already breaking a commandment.

See you in hell, shortcake.