Karaoke in the News

Get Down Tonight

National Hockey League all-star center Jeremy Roenick recently brought a disco ball and karaoke machine into the Philadelphia Flyers locker room to help fire up his team before a game. "I put the disco ball up in the room, shut the lights off and turned it into a little nightclub for half an hour. We did a little K.C. & the Sunshine Band in here. We did a lot of dancing. They just laugh, but it keeps them loose and the music gets them energized.

Bangkok: Karaoke bar rewards chubby guests

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- It's a hefty, twice-weekly offer you don't find at other nightspots: If you and three friends together weigh more than 794 pounds, you get a free bottle of whiskey.

Welcome to the Ichub Club, Bangkok's fat-themed karaoke bar. Paintings of fleshy nudes line the walls, and pillars are plastered with pictures of a chubby comic book character. The chairs are metal, to withstand the weight of the clientele.

"We used to have wooden chairs, but the amount of money we spent on repairs was tremendous," said Ken Chan, one of the owners of Ichub, which is pronounced "I Chub."

Chan, a 35-year-old who weighs 202 pounds, and his partners are all weighty by Asian standards. They opened the club as a place where fat people would feel comfortable, "where they don't feel like freaks."

But Ichub doesn't discriminate against the slim, he added. While the club's heaviest regular customer weighs 353 pounds, the slimmest is 110 pounds.

On a recent night, the bar was packed, mostly with large men -- foreigners and Thais. Uninhibited, they crooned schmaltzy Thai tunes and Western karaoke favorites in Asia like "Desperado" and "New York, New York."

The patrons get a chance to relax away from a modern world seemingly obsessed with thinness.

Biscontri, a 33-year-old Australian who teaches in Hong Kong, comes to Thailand often. He said he prefers Ichub to the "glitz and glamour, sticky floors and crusty seats" of other clubs in Bangkok.

"In a perfect world, you don't need (a place like Ichub), but we don't live in a perfect world," he said.

Notes from all over

Sources tell the us that they have yet to recover from hearing Ron Galotti’s singing. The magazine exec -- who is the inspiration for Mr. Big of HBO’s "Sex and the City" -- joined some models on stage at the GQ Lounge and belted out a karaoke version of "Sweet Home Alabama," report the traumatized sources . . .

Karaoke and Prostitution?

Apparently Shanghai has become once again what it was when the Japanese troops overran it in 1937: a vibrant, economically powerful and cosmopolitan port city.

The grand old banks on the city’s most famous boulevard, the Bund, are under renovation, being readied for clients like JP Morgan and Hong Kong Shanghai Bank who fled in 1949 after the Communist takeover.

Foreign and domestic investment to the city has relit its flame. The new money has led to new cultural institutions, karaoke clubs, cell phones, health clubs - even a thriving district of gay bars. A downside exists, as well: Prostitution and street crime have increased, as has drug use. In other words, Shanghai has many of the ills of any other normal great city.

Tucked away in a suburb near the old airport, the oldest profession in the world thrives. The neon-lit Starlight Karaoke Club - like scores of other clubs - is teeming with sultry "hostesses" who entertain men in private singing rooms. Many of these women are from the countryside, coming to Shanghai for a share in the action.