As AALL joins other organizations returning to in-person conferences and meetings this year, perhaps you were wondering whether Karaoke with Ken would return as well. The short answer is “Not this year.” To begin with, as a retiree, it is uncertain that I would attend later annual meetings after 2019. Like many other retirees, without an employer paying most of my expenses, I would have to weigh whether it would make financial sense to attend. But I did not even reach that question this year.

COVID makes public karaoke outings a risky proposition, even at present. Singers cannot really perform while wearing a mask. Asking friends and colleagues to attend would be asking them to take on a risk that for the past two-and-a-half year I have not been willing to risk. But that is not my primary consideration.

My wife Lisa was struck with a serious illness in January, one that takes all our effort to face. If you would care to know the details, we are posting information at https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/lisahirsh/journal/. The first post is at https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/lisahirsh/journal/view/id/61eae5ddacd8c01e148b56a0 or you can pick and choose posts. You’ll find very detailed information about what we have been doing for the past four months.

Travel is out, and we are very careful to keep risk of exposure to COVID as low as possible. So I definitely will not be at the meeting this year. I cannot say whether there will again be a Karaoke with Ken outing, so I am saying that we’re on hiatus. After all, Sean Connery lived to regret it when he said that he would never play Bond again. And if 2019’s event turns out to have been the last one, it was a great way to wrap up twenty-two years of great fun.

To those of you attending the annual meeting this year, I wish you a terrific time in Denver. I’ll be thinking of you.

GenX folks and early Millennials, with the popular conference platform again hosting the event, it seemed appropriate to call out what might have been one of your favorite PBS shows. Did I plant an earworm?

This year LIT-SIS Karaoke with Ken again goes virtual, using Zoom and Watch2gether.com. And we’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of the event being sponsored by the section! So how do you participate? First, if you are not already a member, join the Facebook group 2021 Virtual Karaoke with Ken. If you joined the 2020 version last year, you are still a member. We’ll post the Zoom and Watch2gether links to the group. The name and the cover photo have been updated. Since the AALL Annual Meeting was planned for Cleveland, you’ll find a photo of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as the cover photo.

As to the karaoke performance details, they are as follows:

We will be using Zoom for gathering as a group and Watch2gether.com for playing the songs. If you want to share the lyrics on screen, please use a a YouTube video. To find a video for a song you wish to use, search YouTube for the term “karaoke” and the song title. Some videos are restricted from playing on Watch2gether.com. To save time on Karaoke Night, please check in advance whether your song will play. Do this by visiting https://watch2gether.com, creating a room, and entering the song URL into the navigation window. If your song plays, add it to your selection list. If it will not play, please choose another song, or pick a song using a backing track you have on your device. In that case, we won’t see the lyrics, but we’ll still get to hear you sing. You may submit up to three songs for the playlist. You’ll find a form to add your songs to the playlist at Google.

At the party, when you are on deck, turn up the volume on your device, turn off sharing your camera/video, and wait for the host to cue up the song. So Zoom in on Saturday, July 17^th, starting at 8:00 PM EDT. We hope that you have fun! And let’s also hope to do this in each other’s company next year!

I apologize for the delay in recounting this year’s event, held just over a month ago. A little thing called the North Carolina bar examination has been monopolizing my time for most of the past nine months. A crowd of about 50 joined us during the course of the evening, and many of our regulars, including Jason Sowards and Jackie Prentice took their turns behind the mic. I was doubly lucky to sing a duet with my wife and another one with Shira Megerman. It was about 12:20 A.M. and Shira was literally on her way out the door when the D.J. finally called our song.

With my retirement from U.C. looming, a few folks had assumed that this would have been the last Karaoke with Ken, and a few others have asked me whether it would be. One cannot say anything about the future with absolute certainly, but I sure hope to be the in-person host for my namesake outing for at least a couple more years. And I’m sure that CS-SIS would like to keep the event going even after I cannot be there. Any volunteers?

Yours For A Song

This year AALL and Karaoke with Ken return to Washington D.C. for the third straight year ending in a 9. In 1999 and 2009 we sang at Cafe Japone; in fact ten years ago we were so numerous that our crowd spilled out the door. Alas, that fine establishment has closed, so on Saturday, July 13^th we’ll move the excitement to Recessions at 1823 L Street, N.W. The online reviews describe Recessions as a popular dive bar; it’s about a mile west of the conference headquarters hotel. The reviewers also note that it is a little hard to find – it’s in the basement of an office building at that address, and we’ll be walking down a long hallway to find the spot. Never fear, as always we’ll have a great time that will make the search worth the effort.

We’ll kick off at our usual starting time at 9:00 P.M.; take note: the karaoke starts at 8:00, so feel free to start a little early if you’d like.

A personal note: By now most of you should know that I am retiring from the University of Cincinnati at the end of August, and I will be returning to Durham. Overall I expect to be semi-retired, and I do plan to remain active in the profession. In fact, I will be working part-time as a “utility infielder” with our good friends at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Katherine R. Everett Law Library. I’m also sitting for the North Carolina bar exam in July, and I’m blogging about my preparation experience. You’ll find the first post in the series here.

I am looking forward to seeing Karaoke with Ken regulars and newcomers alike, and I hope that you’ll join us! Add us to your AALL 2019 conference app!

Really, it was “dinner followed by songs.” Supano’s Prime Steakhouse provided an excellent venue, as about 50 #AALL18 attendees made their way to this year’s edition of Karaoke with Ken. With the singing starting at 10 and many singers, the rotation was fairly long. We had terrific songs from regulars and newcomers alike. Earlier, Debbie Ginsberg, David Matchen, and some others joined me for a delicious dinner at the steakhouse. And I want to give s special shout-out to Elizabeth Outler, who prepared this awesome handout to publicize the event. I stopped by CONELL Marketplace Saturday morning and was giving them to the CONELL participants. It’s always a treat to meet newer librarians!

Due to Ken’s family circumstances, we’re moving Karaoke with Ken to Saturday night, July 14^th. Our venue will be Supano’s Prime Steakhouse, 110 Water Street. The Debra Crawford Karaoke Show kicks off at 10 P.M., so we plan on being at the restaurant starting at 9:00 on Saturday. If you plan on dining at the restaurant, a reservation is required. Visit the website or call them at (410) 986-4445. Be sure to add Karaoke with Ken to your AALL 2018 App!

In July AALL brings its annual meeting back to Baltimore for the first time in twenty-one years. As we’ve noted before, the seed for our CS-SIS Karaoke with Ken outings was planted in Charm City at that annual meeting. If you’re attending the 2018 meeting, then we invite you to join us for this year’s renewal of our night of singing and good cheer. Our venue will be Supano’s Prime Steakhouse, 110 Water Street. The Debra Crawford Karaoke Show kicks off at 10 P.M., so we plan on being at the restaurant starting at 9:00 on Saturday, July 14th! If you plan on dining at the restaurant, a reservation is required. Visit the website or call them at (410) 986-4445. Be sure to add Karaoke with Ken to your AALL 2018 App!

In what appeared to be the best attended event yet, more than eighty of our friends and colleagues came out for this year’s CS-SIS Karaoke with Ken! Others could not get in the door, indicating that, to paraphrase Chief Martin Brody of Jaws, “We’re gonna need a bigger venue!” Long-timers and new folks alike filled the audience and many took the singing stage, demonstrating an abundance of singing talent among our group. Kat, Jackie, Steve, Sarah, Jason, Shira, and so many more belted out terrific numbers, and I apologize that I don’t keep a comprehensive playlist. I invite you to add your comment if you were one of our singers, or send me an email so I can properly recognize you here.

I’ve deputized David Matchen to begin searching for our Baltimore venue for the 2019 AALL Annual Meeting and Conference. As noted in my earlier post, the event began in Baltimore in 1997, so our theme for next year’s Karaoke with Ken is “Back to the Beginning But Old Enough to Drink!” I hope to see – and hear – you there!

During the 1997 AALL annual meeting in Baltimore, one evening after dinner Don Buffaloe, James Milles, and I found a bar near the convention center that was offering karaoke. I’ve led a karaoke outing every year since, and in 2001 the event was officially sponsored by the Computing Services Special Interest Section. I invite you to join karaoke fans at this year’s Karaoke with Ken on Saturday, July 15^th, starting at 9:00 P.M. We are lucky to have as our venue Chinatown, a restaurant near the convention center and hotels in Austin. Add Karaoke with Ken to your Conference App Schedule and I’ll look for you there!

Lisa (my wife) and I left the Hyatt Regency for Brando’s Speakeasy a little after 8 PM on Sunday evening, to be sure we’d be there to welcome the other participants. To our surprise, upon our arrival we found that the door was locked and a handwritten sign said simply, “Closed Today!” When our initial shock subsided, I tweeted out a note that we were returning to the hotel to regroup and consider alternative plans. I also asked Kate Hagan, AALL’s Executive Director, to post a note in the conference app, and Cara Schillinger kindly did so a little while later.

Lisa had left a voice message with the bar’s owner, and after concluding that there was no alternative venue available, we decided to salvage the evening by joining CALL for its trivia night at Timothy O’Toole’s. Debbie Ginsberg, Julie Prabarja, and their colleagues were very accommodating. I joined Debbie’s team while Lisa found a stool at the bar, and Julie kindly asked the bar manager whether they could bring in the karaoke DJ. Ultimately he could not make it. The trivia crowd of about 120 was four times the size they were expecting, and it was a raucous and fun time.

During the evening Ron Wheeler put me in touch with the manager at Brando’s and he explained that a water pipe had burst that day and flooded the bar. He assure me that they would reopen on Monday and we planned accordingly.

Photo courtesy Corie Dugas

With Thomson Reuters promising “Librarian Idol” for the customer appreciation event, it looked like karaoke would be the order of the evening. After I invited Cindy Bassett to dance while Bonnie Shucha rocked the house, Lisa and I returned to Brando’s. Later in the evening we were joined by about 35 of our gang, making the evening a success despite the smaller than usual turnout. All-in-all, a great two evenings thanks to all the folks I mentioned above and many more!

Courtesy of Heather Kushnerick, here’s a shot of Lisa and me, with Lisa singing harmony on the choruses of “Hallelujah.”

Please plan on joining us in Austin next year!