EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT THE WORLD I LEARNED FROM KARAOKE. You want to talk about "pervasive eroticism"? Try doing karaoke in southern Connecticut, and having a couple of young ladies hit you with the Pussycat Song. (WARNING: The lyrics are more than a little lewd, and the website will try to offer you plugins that you don't want to download. Click awares.) All cultures, I'm sure, have bawdy songs, with suggestive double-entendres. Such things, I imagine, are natural. But there's something about how thoroughly explicit this song's lyrics are that set them apart. They made me, a hard-hearted and cynical 23 year-old, genuinely uncomfortable as I listened. What's happened to our culture when young ladies feel entirely comfortable singing a song whose lyrics read like the transcript to a porno film in front of a room of total strangers? Zuh...

As for myself, my rendition of In the Ghetto was both tasteful and soulful.