the line between superfluity and functionality

the other day i went karaoke-ing. despite the fact that the reason for this outing was to let a girlfriend of mine sing and dance her boy problems away, i was still all over it because i love karaoke nights. i'm by no means good at it; i can carry a tune well enough, but that doesn't mean i have any talent in the singing department. that's the beauty of it, though. lack of singing talent makes karaoke what it is, which is essentially a room full of drunk, inhibition-less people in a bowling alley bar crooning away while everyone else makes fun of them.

on this particular karaoke outing, my scorned friend was out in big-time "hell hath no fury" mode, with more than a hint of "i'd rather be curled up on the couch watching titanic with a pint of ben & jerry's" heartbreak mode. this combination could mean nothing but, yes, you guessed it, crooning through breakup ballads of the 70s and 80s: the three sheets to the wind edition. from 'endless love' and 'he's got you' to 'every rose has its thorns,' all the way through 'i will survive,' the poor thing ran the gamut of "my heart's been stomped on and now it's on my sleeve" emotions.

anyway, the shameful point of this story is that i know all the words to all these songs. not just the sappy power ballads, but the classic rock, the bad 90s pop, the great 80s dance hits, the oldies but goodies... singing along to the drunken american idol blooper reel made me realize how much random, useless stuff i have bouncing around my head.

for example, before the other night i hadn't heard a backstreet boys song in about a decade, seeing as i've tried my best to forget the boy band phase of my life. but when some preppy barely-21 who could've gone to high school with me got up and, in a fit of nostalgia, started singing 'larger than life,' it was like i was 10 again and knew every lyric.

the thing is, song lyrics really just barely scratch the surface of everything filed away in my memory banks. random trivia from snapple caps, answers to obscure trivial pursuit questions, lines from my favorite movies, pointless anecdotes professors put in their lectures to make them more interesting, it's all there. it's kind of amazing, really, how little of this information is actually useful in any capacity.

so there i am, watching my friend wail away along with diana ross, thinking what i could do if all this entirely superfluous information were replaced with legitimately helpful information. could i be off curing cancer or preventing global warming if i had managed to retain the important stuff? my general policy in high school and throughout most every gen ed class i've taken was to breeze through the day-to-day, cram like hell in the hours before any major tests, and forget it all the minute i didn't need it anymore. it worked like a charm, too.

but what if i couldn't tell you that an autopsy on an animal is called a necropsy, and instead the space in my brain used for stockpiling that tidbit was going toward something credible? kind of an interesting thought.

on the other hand, i don't want to be a brain surgeon or an astronaut. i'm an advertising major, which means the only real skills i need are the ability to bullshit and the ability to persuade people to buy things they don't need, and these two skills are conveniently interlaced. i choose to think that my brain is filtering out all the stuff it knows i won't need and hanging on to anything that might be helpful at some point. sure, it might just be things like party anecdotes, but i've always felt it's better to know a little about a lot than a lot about a little. consequently, i've now convinced myself that it's a good thing that ten years after my boy band phase i can still sit here and spit out the lyrics to 'mmmbop' like it's my job.

and just as a parting note, 'karaoke' is japanese for 'empty orchestra.' i learned that on 'how i met your mother.'