A WHOLE LOT OF ANDY

As per ancient tradition going back to when Noah exploded the Hindenburg at Golgotha, my friend the bookseller and myself crawled pubs in North Beach. Ending up at a place where a whole bunch of decent and relatively nicely behaving young Chinese people of both types (Mandarin-speakers and Cantonese) were drinking and singing karaoke.

The very least that should be said is that it was better than an e-commerce yuppie Marketing department on a night out. Better singing, better public behaviour. No staggering drunks you wanted to stick a blade into.
Obviously, we were the only Caucasians in the place.


It should be stressed that neither the bookseller nor I sing in public. Although when crossing Broadway we did parlando quote the Knights of the Round Table song from a famous religious movie.


I deeply regret that there were absolutely no Mandarin oldies in the line-up.
It was mostly soulful Canto-pop, with far too much Andy Lau.


At one point an 'Older Brother' type sang.
Which was quite unmemorable.


Did you know that there are several dozen songs entitled "情歌"? All of which are vastly different? And each of them is nauseatingly sappy.
Again, too much Andy Lau (劉德華 'lau tak wah').


In life, there is too much Andy Lau.


His movies are good.


I forgot to offer the bookseller a cigarillo when we left.
I feel bad about that.




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