For the last two Wednesdays, I've been spending my free time judging the karaoke competition at Job #1. (I know, going to work on your day off is kind of lame, but when I'm judging a contest and drinking for free, I'm not seeing the problem with it.)

One of the things that's happening is that those who don't place in the top three come back every week, giving it another go. Perseverance is an admirable quality, no doubt about that, but it's the ones that suck really badly that are always coming back. There's this one couple who each enter separately every week, cranking up their arrogance with each passing round. This last Wednesday, the gentleman wore sunglasses onstage and the woman definitely had more attitude, shaking her shoulders and declaring to her man that nobody would love him better.

Well, this couple is awful: genuinely, unbelievably awful. The guy is kind of hit and miss - sometimes he isn't quite as bad. Every now and again he almost comes close to possibly rocking the John Mellencamp songs he loves so much. The woman, however, is just... bad. Bad. Really really bad. I don't know how many times she can desecrate the masterpieces of the Dixie Chicks and Vanessa Carleton without God striking her down.

Every week they come back, hoping that this will be their week. They gaze into each others' eyes, soaking up every word, every warbling tone, every wrong note. They love it so much that they harass the drunk judges after the winners have been announced, hoping to see their scores so they can improve. We, the judges, are inebriated and slightly embarrassed to tell them that they scored six out of forty.

The thing that puzzles me about this couple, and about seventy percent of the Bad Karaoke Regulars, is that nobody tells them how awful they are. Yes, if you get up there, give it a go, realize you're bad, and finish as gracefully as possible, that's one thing. If your friends put you up to it as a joke, that's another (unusually cruel) thing. But if you really think you rock when you clearly suck and your friends don't tell you, that's just mean.

Although, if they don't tell you, maybe it's because being a karaoke star is your dream. They don't want to crush your fragile dream. So they decide to let you wear fucking sunglasses onstage because that's how much they care. And when you don't win, they'll harass the judges for as long as it takes before the judge drunkenly sputter, "YOUKNOWWHAT, man.... I don't even know! You don't even know! Where's my fucking drink??"

I've found out the hard way that karaoke is serious business, and definitely not something to be taken lightly. Especially in Superior.