Karaoke everywhere

The proliferation of Magic Sing, Magic Mic and Ziller means that everytime I turn around, someone is singing “Your Love” by Alamid, or “Alone” by Heart.

I mean this literally: the house across the street from us is more than 100 feet away. The family who lives there set up their karaoke machine on their balcony, overlooking the street. Daily they sing, over tricycles and pedestrians, taho vendors and bikes. It’s really very loud. In our kitchen I hear them the loudest; it’s louder than the TV in our den.

Mom says we should start singing in the garage to show them how it’s done; they’re barely in tune. There’s a girl with a warbly voice, a man who coughs during the high notes and skips words when songs are in odd time signatures.

I went to use a photocopy machine at a sari-sari store five blocks away; in front of a tricycle stand, beside the store, was a karaoke machine. In the middle of the afternoon, drivers and nannies, three year old kids were huddled around a TV, singing karaoke songs.

At department stores and malls, there are karaoke machines for sale everywhere. In one electronics store, a Ziller was on display by the glass display window. Near closing time, I saw the blue-vested sales man belting out “Just Once” by James Ingram. He wasn’t quite hitting the curly high notes, but I’d have given him an A for effort anyway. The veins of his neck were popping out towards the ending chorus.