By Michael Bednar

“This one goes out to all the shitty men,” the girl in knee-high, stiletto-heeled boots says as she wobbles across the stage with a beer in her hand. “Fuck them!” She proceeds to perform a venomous rendition of “Goodbye Earl” while her male friend sits smiling in the booth adjacent to the stage.

Every karaoke place has a distinct personality, patronage and even song choice, as I discovered in my research for my department “American Idol Without the Judges,” and personal “research” I continued long after my story was written. At one bar, I watched a young man in skinny jeans and a leather jacket overemote as if he believed he were the second coming of Mariah Carey. I watched a couple perform a six-minute song from Wicked, complete with dialogue. I watched a timid-voiced young man with shaggy hair come up to the mic repeatedly to perform half-hearted versions of Ke$ha, Britney Spears and Lady GaGa songs.

I think there’s something magical about the atmosphere of karaoke bars, a sense that everyone’s in it together. My voice may be as off key as a guitar that hasn’t been tuned in four decades, but who is anyone else in the audience to laugh?