Remember that New York Times article about Portland karaoke we were all so worked up about a couple weeks ago? The Times just issued an excellent correction to the piece regarding the gender of the puppet that sang "Steal My Sunshine" Chopsticks 3:

"This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 23, 2013
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to a puppet that appeared in a show at a local karaoke club. It is known as Señor Serpiente, not Señora Serpiente."

Congratulations to puppeteer/Shakespeare Party host Jonathan Owicki for holding the paper of record accountable to their own high standards.

I'm a big fan of Dan Kois' writing, and so for once I'm not gonna groan about seeing a story about Portland in the New York Times.

Even if that story—about Portland's popular Baby Ketten karaoke—does pose the question: "Is it possible that one of the most exciting music scenes in America is happening right now in Portland, and it doesn’t feature a single person playing an actual instrument?"

No, I don't think that's really possible, for the simple reason that I'm not sure a scene is defined solely by its participants, and karaoke isn't much of a spectator sport. A karaoke crowd is like a terrible conversationalist, never listening, always waiting for her turn to talk. But I like this piece, because it makes Portland's nightlife sound goofy and fun, instead of smug and elitist and full of people who bike-churn their own butter, which is how the New York Times usually makes us sound.

I've spent my fair share of time at Portland's karaoke bars—as an accomplice to Laura Hudson's 7-Day Karaoke-A-Thon Blogtown series—and on the periphery of the admittedly cult-like Baby Ketten scene. (Laura—whose social media updates about Portland karaoke inspired Kois' trip to Portland—also profiled Baby Ketten's John Brophy.) Kois perfectly captures the weird, fleeting euphoria of a fun karaoke night, as well as the way karaoke becomes a curiously self-affirming pursuit for some people. If there isn't already a karaoke-based self-help book out there... well, give it a year.

But I do have one question: How does any article about Portland karaoke fail to include mention of my boss Wm. Steven Humphrey's rendition of Taylor Swift's "Never Getting Back Together"???? You better believe I'm working on a letter to the editor.

In the mean time, can we have this printed on our state flag?

Mulkern swept his long hair over his shoulders and put his top hat back on. “People in Portland,” he declared, “are sillier than in other places.”

As previously mentioned, Monday night's Skate-a-Roke event was a stone cold gas, baby! (If you missed it, don't sweat! We're currently planning the next one!) And now, over on the Rose City Rollers Facebook page, they've got a crap ton of absolutely gorgeous pics taken by the talented Masonite Burn Photography. Jump over there and see how stunning you look, and... oh, my goodness. WHO IS THAT GREEK GOD?

• Courtesy Masonite Burn Photography

UPDATE: Purchasing tickets ONLINE for Skate-a-roke is now closed—but don't fret! You'll still be able to get them at the door tonight!

Let the bells ring and the confetti fall, because the debut of SKATE-A-ROKE is tonight! As you know this is possibly the first time in the annals of human history that roller skating and karaoke will be joined together, and it just won't be the same if you aren't there! Plus, it's a benefit for our own Rose City Rollers, which should make you feel extra good, and they're supplying some cool pre-skate lessons for those who want to donate a bit more! Regular entry tickets are only $10, which you should definitely pick up NOW, because skating and singing only goes from 7:30 to 10—which means ticket holders skip the line, and can start having fun immediately!

Oh, and get this: For only $25, you can gain entry to Skate-a-Roke AND get this awesome commemorative T-shirt (again, proceeds go to the Rose City Rollers). Check it out!

COME ON OUT, IT WILL BE A UNMITIGATED BLAST. And if you want a feel for the vibe, or how you should dress, check out this wondrous clip from the 1979 film Roller Boogie. See you there!

The Blogtown Karaoke-a-Thon rolls on, visiting a different Portland karaoke hotspot every night and reviewing the best and worst places in town to sing your heart out. We also decided to ask the experts — the KJs who emcee the magic night after night — about what makes a karaoke performance a hit or a flop, how the hell they decide what song to put up next, and why it isn't yours. Next up is John Brophy, the KJ at Baby Ketten Karaoke.

• John Brophy

What's the worst thing someone can do at karaoke?
Get pass out drunk.

I just want to recognize that, as we say this, you and I are both very drunk right now.
Yes.

You can look at me, you know. You don't have to look at the microphone. It will keep recording. What would you say to people who think karaoke sucks?
Well, that depends. Do they think karaoke sucks because it has bad music? Because we've got that covered. Or do they think karaoke sucks because the singers are bad? We've got some really great singers. People who hate karaoke because they have fear in their face? I will punch it out of their face.

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Portland resident, ComicsAlliance editor, and insane karaoke addict Laura Hudson continues her 7-day karaoke marathon, hitting up a different Portland hotspot every night and reporting her experiences back to Blogtown.

The great thing about Voicebox is also the worst thing about it, depending on your perspective: It takes away the audience, and replaces them with your best friends. The focus is much more on a communal experience, something you'll notice immediately if you try to stand up and sing from anywhere besides the seating area, the only place the screen with the lyrics is really visible.

If you really get off on the thrill of performing for a large and somewhat anonymous crowd, it's unlikely that you're going replicate that excitement by singing in front of a handful of people you already know. But if getting up on stage to sing fills you with paralyzing, existential terror, chances are you going to be a lot happier at Voicebox.

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The Blogtown Karaoke-a-Thon rolls on, visiting seven different Portland karaoke hotspots and reviewing the best and worst places in town to sing your heart out. We also decided to ask the experts — the KJs who emcee the magic night after night — about what makes a karaoke performance a hit or a flop, how the hell they decide what song to put up next, and why it isn't yours. Next up is Dawn Panttaja, the co-founder of Karaoke From Hell, where you perform with a live band.

• Dawn Panttaja

DAWN PANTTAJA: The fact that it's not a machine. It's like going to see your favorite local band, but you get to sing in it. Or if you're one of those people who doesn't do karaoke, you get to watch your best friend or your mother sing in a band... But most of all, it's not just karaoke, it's a four hour event (or a four hour train wreck). Each night can have a totally different vibe, for better or for worse. The personalities of the musicians and their own style make up a big part of the show. And it's more than just people singing, it's a night of entertainment.

The variety of singers, good or bad, really affects each night, but everyone doesn't have to be good. That could actually get rather boring. They just need to have fun. It's the whole package and all the variables that makes it a good destination for anyone who wants to take a chance on witnessing heaven or hell. There's hundreds of places to sing karaoke but only one Karaoke From Hell band.

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Portland resident, ComicsAlliance editor, and insane karaoke addict Laura Hudson continues her 7-day karaoke marathon, hitting up a different Portland hotspot every night and reporting her experiences back to Blogtown.

If someone who doesn't go to karaoke regularly decides to sing a song like “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” it's entirely possible that this is very first time they've performed it, or even heard it at karaoke. If you go to karaoke all the time, however, song cliches become rapidly and gratingly apparent, so unless the person up at the mic happens to be Bonnie Tyler somehow reincarnated despite still being alive, it's kind of like listening to a word repeated so many times that it loses all meaning, as sung by the voice of Rebecca Black.

I do recognize, though, that this is not necessarily the perspective of everyone who goes to karaoke, or even most people. It's supposed to be fun, after all, so there's nothing wrong with people wanting to treat it as a casual thing where they get drunk with their friends and cue up really, really familiar songs they can all sing together in unison, especially at a like-minded karaoke venue with a like-minded audience. For these purposes, The Boiler Room is a pretty good venue.

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Portland resident, ComicsAlliance editor, and insane karaoke addict Laura Hudson continues her 7-day karaoke marathon, hitting up a different Portland hotspot every night and reporting her experiences back to Blogtown. She apologizes for her delay in posting — she is currently on her 10th straight day of karaoke and slightly dying, but will catch up soon.

Then I went to Baby Ketten Karaoke, and everything changed.

I've been to a lot — repeat, a lot — of karaoke places, but I've never fallen in love with any of them until Baby Ketten, which rotates to numerous bars around town but primarily Mississippi Pizza (Tues) and Beauty Bar (Wed). Let me begin by saying that if what you want to do at karaoke is get really drunk with your friends and sing “I Will Survive” in unison, that is a totally valid life choice and something my history with karaoke leaves me no room to judge. But doing it at Baby Ketten is kind of a waste, because you do can that, literally, at any karaoke joint in existence. And if Baby Ketten is anything, it is a truly unique experience in ways both small and large.

For starters, the song selection is basically insane, with the deepest and most diverse library I have ever seen. I never thought I'd have a chance to sing Radiohead b-sides as 8-bit chiptunes, or put the “The Tape Song” by the Kills and the Carl Sagan autotune remix “Sound of Science” on a karaoke song slip. I also never thought I would see the entirety of Abbey Road — or soon, Doolittle by the Pixies — performed in precise album order at karaoke, but Baby Ketten has proved me wrong on every count.

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Portland resident, ComicsAlliance editor, and insane karaoke addict Laura Hudson continues her 7-day karaoke marathon, hitting up a different Portland hotspot every night and reporting her experiences back to Blogtown.

It's a nice dream, and if you happen to have the instruments, equipment, talent, dedication, and luck necessary to form a rock band and make it a reality, then that is very awesome for you. For everyone else, though, the closest you're going to get is Karaoke From Hell.

In short, Karaoke From Hell is like regular karaoke, except that instead of singing solo to a pre-recorded track with lyrics on a screen, you're standing on stage with a live band playing behind you. Which is to say, it is not like regular karaoke at all in so many ways that it's hard to know if the definition even applies.

That's not a complaint, mind you, but I do know that some of the people I brought to Karaoke From Hell walked away elated, and others totally pissed off, and the reasons for both seemed to coalesce around one general theme: It wasn't the kind of karaoke they were used to.

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The 7-Day Blogtown Karaoke-a-Thon rolls on, visiting a different Portland karaoke hotspot every night and reviewing the best and worst places in town to sing your heart out. We also decided to ask the experts — the KJs who emcee the magic night after night — about what makes a karaoke performance a hit or a flop, how the hell they decide what song to put up next, and why it isn't yours. First up is Darryl Zero, the KJ at Devil's Point Stripparaoke.

• Darryl Zero

What's the worst performance you've ever seen?
If someone's so drunk that they're falling down, they could sing the best song in the world and it wouldn't matter. Also, anyone who wants to sing Meatloaf at Stripparaoke really needs to be stabbed in the stomach. Dancers have to stay up there for like 8 minutes to the most godawful piece of excrement.

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Portland resident, ComicsAlliance editor, and insane karaoke addict Laura Hudson begins her 7-day karaoke marathon, hitting up a different Portland hotspot every night and reporting her experiences back to Blogtown.

Day 1: Stripparaoke at Devil's Point (Sunday nights at 9 PM, 5305 SE Foster Rd)

• Devil's Point

Karaoke, at its core, is the singular experience of the lead singer stripped (no pun intended) away from the dynamics of a band. It is you, a microphone and an audience, and whatever gold you manage to spin out of that straw through the sheer force of your performance. But when you get up on stage with a dancer at a strip club, all of that changes because you realize — or you should — that you're in her house now. This is not your show; this is not your spotlight. Her body is on lead vocals now, and no matter how fucking hard you rock it, you're just here to be her backup band.

Maybe, if you're lucky, you can be the cool bassist that she grinds on a little bit during the instrumental break, but for the most part you're just there to lay down the right kind of tunes, add some energy to the equation, and then get out of the way so she can work her magic.

The shift in power is even reinforced by your physical position on the stage: Unlike most karaoke venues, where standing absolutely motionless off to one side would be a sign of a lackluster performance, at Stripparaoke it's actually required. Seriously, hold still, because if you get overexcited and lunge forward to croon the high note on your monster jam, there's a pretty good chance you'll get kicked in the face by the elegant pole ninjustu of a smoking hot lady.

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My name is Laura Hudson, and I'm a karaoke addict. I'm also the editor-in-chief of ComicsAlliance, the largest U.S. comic book website, but for our purposes the more important point is that I'm a Portland resident who usually goes out to sing karaoke around 3-5 nights a week, behavior that has been generously referred to as "very enthusiastic," and less generously referred to as "a borderline mental illness."

Despite the possibly half-serious jokes by my friends about holding some sort of intervention, the kind editors of the Mercury, in their infinite and addiction-enabling wisdom, have recruited me to turn my obsession into something productive or at least entertaining: a 7-day karaoke marathon where I visit one to two different karaoke hotspots around Portland every night for an entire week until I either complete the marathon or die, and report my experiences back to you.

The karaoke odyssey began tonight at 9 PM at the strip club Devil's Point with Stripparoke, which is exactly what it sounds like: strippers stripping while you sing karaoke. Here's the current schedule:

Sunday: Stripparoke at Devil's Point 9 PM / Stage 2: Alibi
Monday: Karaoke from Hell at Dante's 10 PM
Tuesday: Baby Ketten Karaoke at Mississippi Pizza 9 PM
Wednesday: Boiler Room 9 PM / Stage 2: Beauty Bar
Thursday: Ambassador, Midnight
Friday: Chopsticks II 8:30 PM / Stage 2: BC's
Saturday: Hollywood Bowl 9 PM

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