Karaoke

Good Friends and Good Beer
Thursday night at Harvest Moon is Karaoke night. Thursday night at Harvest Moon is awesome. Ergo, Karaoke night is awesome. That's logic, baby.

Other Karaoke nights at other bars are just not the same. The Golden Rail has a Karaoke night, but the atmosphere is much less open, more impatient and judging. It's more of an undergrad bar, full of remarkably pretentious frat boys and sorostitutes (and this is coming from a guy who was in a fraternity and many of whose friends were in sororities!). Doll's has an alleged Karaoke night, but none of us have been able to confirm that claim.
Harvest Moon Karaoke... turning skinny guys into cool kids since 2006
Harvest Moon is a microbrewery. Which means that the bar is full of delicious, one-of-a-kind, delicious beer. It just tastes so good! They have wine and mixed drinks for the non-beer-drinkers, but honestly, who goes into a microbrewery and orders a not-beer? Or worse, a Coors (you know who you are, and shame on you!)

The General Manager of this fine establishment is Dario. Being from Italy, Dario knows a thing or two about cycling. Not much more than a thing or two, but enough that occasionally, upon our arrival, Dario will rush over with the printout of an Italian newspaper with a headline "Il Grillo e Il Vincitore" or whatever. Also, occasionally, Dario will buy the team shots (which is simultaneously great and terrible, you know?). It also helps that we know the bartenders, the bouncer, and some of the wait staff. The whole crew there is great. Which is nice.
DARIO!!!
The crowd is also fantastic. Some nights are slower than others, but you always get to sing about as often as you'd like, and no matter how bad you are, nobody ever boos. In the worst case, people resume their conversations. If, however, you rock (much like my guys do), the crowd will really get into the performance. Dancing, skanking, shouting, cheering... all forms of support are acceptable.
The Jenksster... no further captioning needed
Every so often, the 1st year BMEs show up. This is good, not only because it increases the overall grooviness (yes, grooviness) of the scene, but also because it gives those poor bastards some time away from the computer, away from the textbooks, and away from the not-beer. They need that, because otherwise they'll turn into Trolls or Computer Science majors.
Team BME, during a rare break from the respective labs
Usually, though, the biggest, the loudest, the charismatic-est group in the bar is the Rutgers University Cycling team (plus Jenksy). We cheer for each other. We cheer for good performances. We dance like maniacs to "I Want You to Want Me" or "99 Red Balloons". We backup dance for each other (that was the best performance of "Like A Prayer" ever). Eric the Karaoke guy sometimes introduces us as AngryMark, NinjaDon, or (when there are a lot of names on the song-request slip) as the Rutgers Cycling team. We enjoy that.
A small fraction of the Cyclists/Karaoke-regulars
For future reference, if you ever come to Karaoke night and Jay's name gets called, you must begin to chant "Jay Number One! Jay Number One!". I'm not even sure if I remember why anymore.

I can't even describe how great it is to go to this bar with these guys every week. Not counting times that I wasn't even in NJ, I've missed 2 karaoke nights since I started going last August. It's such a good release, so fun, so invigorating. It is a less painful, more expensive version of hill intervals, if that makes any sense.

Will put it best when he said, "Damnit, Don, do you realize what you've done? Now every week is just a buildup to Thursday!"
Sometimes it becomes necessary to both Rock and Roll