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Karaoke Addicts || Bridge:
You can count on it || Puzzle Solution
Karaoke Addicts
Jim Beckerman
Birthdays are one of the few occasions when
the average person sings in public. In the karaoke world, where everyone
sings all the time, the ante had to be upped. That’s why Sarah Savoye
of Hackensack, who is celebrating her birthday at the Monday karaoke
night at the Old Time Sizzlin’ Steak House, is nervous.
No simple "Happy Birthday to You"
in this place. No, Sarah is going to have to sing a song chosen on the
spot from Disc 25 (because it’s her 25th birthday) and selected at
random by the audience.
Kamikaze karaoke, it’s called. In the
audience, people begin shouting track numbers. "13!"
"17!" "3!" "12!"
She’s in luck. It turns out to be No. 12,
"Theme From Love Story."
Gamely, Sarah takes the microphone, watches
the lyrics as they appear line by line on a big TV screen, and begins to
warble.
"Where do I begin, to tell the story
of how great a love can be ..."
The crowd at the Hackensack eatery cheers,
whistles, and encourages her -- even joining in at times.
"She fills my heart ..." they
sing in giddy chorus.
Ready or not, here comes karaoke -- again.
This huge subculture of amateur
entertainers, who add their voices onto other people’s hits with the
aid of expensive sound systems, had been waning a bit, says John H.
Corby, manager of The Karaoke Store and More in Elmwood Park.
Now it’s back, and how. "It was
extremely popular six or seven years ago, then it went down a little
bit, and now it's had a resurgence," Corby says.
It’s even become the subject of a
big-budget Hollywood movie, "Duets," starring Gwyneth Paltrow,
Huey Lewis, and Andre Braugher.
"I think it will give the karaoke
scene a bit of a boost, " says Sue Fox of Hackensack, who hosted
the Monday night show, produced by Sing Sing Karaoke, the service arm of
the Karaoke Store.
"I think [‘Duets’] might prompt
people to go to a karaoke show and check it out," Fox says.
For rock star Lewis, "Duets" was
an eye-opener.
His own music is popular in karaoke
circles: The Sing Sing songbook lists 10 Huey Lewis and the News songs
among its 5,000 titles, including "Heart of Rock ‘n’
Roll," "This is IT," and "The Power of Love."
Yet Lewis himself never explored this
musical underground until he was tapped to play the character of Ricky
Dean, the karaoke hustler who suckers people into betting against him
and then blows them away at the microphone.
"I sort of pooh-poohed karaoke for a
long time," says Lewis, who did a little field research by going
into a karaoke bar in Vancouver, where "Duets" was shot.
What he saw knocked him for a loop. "I
was amazed," he said. "It had more to do with singing than
making a record. When you make a record you can do it line by line, and
sweeten it with effects. But in karaoke, you only have one shot at it.
You can really tell in a karaoke bar who can sing and who can’t. It
would be interesting to see the top 20 singers sing in a karaoke
bar."
Contrary to the stereotype of the no-talent
ham croaking "Three Times a Lady" in the wrong key, most of
the people who sing karaoke in the thousands of bars, restaurants, and
clubs across the nation are pretty good at it.
Some are very, very good.
Which is no surprise, given the amount of
time they put in. Hard-core karaoke fiends sometimes do it five or six
nights a week, following their favorite "KJ’s" -- Karaoke
deejays that is -- around a whole circuit of clubs.
Many practice at home on their own karaoke
systems -- an increasingly popular item, according to Corby.
Legend has it that karaoke was born around
1980, when a resourceful Japanese bar owner, faced with a no-show
guitarist, played tapes of instrumental music -- to which the bar
patrons began to sing along.
The term itself comes from two Japanese
words: "karappo," meaning "empty," and "okesutura,"
meaning orchestra. Karaoke means "empty orchestra," just as
"karate" means "empty hand."
Leave it to Americans to give karaoke a new
twist.
The Japanese sang the songs, more or less
anonymously, from their seats, with all eyes turned to a
"mood" video played in the front of the restaurant.
In fame-obsessed America, however, the
spotlight was on the performer, not the song. Thus was born the
"KJ," the Dick Clark of the karaoke world, whose job was to
give young hopefuls their three minutes in the spotlight.
"Everybody loves to show off,
everybody wants to have their three minutes of fame," says Rich
Pashman, who co-owns The Karaoke Store and More with Chuck Caccioli.
"I’ll never forget the first song I
sang," Savoye says. "My friend dared me to get up with him and
sing ‘La Bamba.’ He tricked me. He didn’t sing a word of it. I got
stuck singing the whole song."
Funny how karaoke seems to turn people into
practical jokers.
In Vancouver, friends put Huey Lewis’
name down on a sign-up sheet. The song? "Stuck With You" by
Huey Lewis.
"I sounded just like the guy,"
Lewis says.
Bridge: You can count on it
Julian Laderman
After a bridge hand is completed, one of
the players may ask you if your shape was 4-5-3-1. Don’t respond
indignantly that you were a perfect 34-24-34. You are being asked in
bridge shorthand if you were dealt 4 spades, 5 hearts, 3 diamonds, and 1
club. These four digits refer to the suits in reverse alphabetic order
and of course always add up to 13. In some connotations these numbers
just refer to the number of cards in the suits without indicating
specific suits. For example, a bridge player may describe a hand as a
4-3-3-3 distribution in order to indicate one 4 card suit. However, in
this case, the suit is not necessarily spades.
On the illustrated hand the defense started
with two rounds of spades. On the second trick East discarded a club and
South ruffed. Now South attacked the trump suit. On the second round of
trump West shed a spade. Only four tricks have been played, but an alert
declarer will realize how much action has taken place. He has almost a
complete knowledge of the distribution of the cards held by each
defender, because each has already discarded. Since East had only one
spade, West started with seven spades. This is consistent with the 3S
bid. Since West started with only one heart, he had a total of five
cards in clubs and diamonds. Declarer should make a mental note of this
after the fourth trick. Now declarer should continue playing trump for
two more rounds in order to remove all trump cards from East. Both West
and dummy each discard two spades. Declarer can continue by winning two
rounds of clubs with the ace and the king. A pleasant surprise occurs
when on the second round a spade is discarded by West. Since West was
dealt one club, and declarer already learned that West started with 5
cards in the minors, declarer knows that West started with exactly four
diamonds and East with two diamonds. West’s distribution in bridge
shorthand is described as 7-1-4-1.
Using this information, declarer has no
problem winning 4 diamond tricks. He first plays the king and queen,
exhausting East of his two diamonds, followed by the 3 diamonds in order
to finesse with the ace and 10 combination. The fourth round of diamonds
will enable declarer to discard the losing club.
Had West been able to play a club on both
rounds, declarer would have known that West started with at most three
diamonds, and that it would be clearly wrong to finesse. Declarer would
have had to hope that West had exactly three diamonds so that the suit
would break 3-3 and four diamond tricks could be won. If declarer
notices the opponents yawning, he should play all his trump tricks
before the diamonds. Defense may discard incorrectly and give declarer a
trick he does not deserve.
The technique employed to figure out how
many cards each defender has in each suit is called counting. The
mathematics in bridge is quite simple since one never needs to deal with
numbers larger than 13. Unfortunately, even though counting does not
require great intelligence, it does require a considerable amount of
effort and concentration. Most players are far too lazy to use this
technique on every hand. Therefore, it is important to recognize
situations when it is needed. On the illustrated hand, declarer should
foresee at the very first trick that he will eventually have to decide
how to play the diamond suit: either to play for the 3-3 break or to
finesse West for the diamond jack. Counting the hand provides the
answer.
Even though it is very tiring to count
hands when one first starts, using this technique gets easier with
experience. After all, since all players start with 13 cards, once you
know three suits, the fourth suit is revealed. Counting is essential for
fine defense as well as declarer play. Good bridge players are rewarded
for their effort. Try to form the habit and then treat yourself to a
well-deserved nap after the session of bridge.
Solution to Puzzle from A11
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