This looks so awesome.

Nate, I assure you neither I nor BYT had anything to do with who got selected for the finals. Rob and Paul were the obvious crowd favorites, and I’d never even met Lil’ Miss Ro Ro till that night. I’ve also never met the judges and it was all based off their scoring, but if you want to write a letter to Scott Rattler I’ll see what I can do about getting you his info.

Michael, you should have come anyway.

Thanks for the response. Don’t want to turn the comments here into a debate, so I’ll be quick:

It’s probably not really fair for me to complain, because I do have a horse in the game here. I was just surprised that what seemed to be a few crowd favorites didn’t make the finals. And the fact that a group of people who were (as far as I could gather) BYT-connected roommates did make it was a little off-putting.

Still, it was a great time, and thanks to whoever deserves thanks for all the work that went into it.

Svet:

Fair enough. Someone said it was a BYT event and I saw it discussed here, so I just assumed. I suppose I could have checked.

I would point out that my (mistakenly) pinning blame for this on you comes from not knowing anything about y’all, a far cry from conspiracy-theorizing.

Anyway, sorry for the digression. Carry on.

define BYT connected? I mean, in a way-it’s a pretty wide web of 2 or 3 degrees of separation that is spread here. I will say that we met Alfonso as a result of loving his rendition of “No Diggity” at Summer Camp, which prompted me to buy him a drink, but him aside (and obviously the photographer we staffed) I don’t think I personally know anyone who’s in the finale. Anyway-there is always next year. ALWAYS.

I shouldn’t have used that phrase; I was mistaken. There was a set of roommates who I assumed were BYT-connected because I assumed that BYT was running it; now that I know I was wrong I instead assume that they were connected to Andrew Herndon or whoever was actually in charge.

So my apologies for directing my criticism at BYT; it’s misdirected.

Aww, my first article with drama in the comments thread. I guess I should be savoring this?

Nate, any connection to BYT, or Andrew, is totally inconsequential. It was based totally off the judges scoring, and not even Andrew had anything to do with who got picked. Saying he had was handpicking finalists does him a disservice, and I can tell you it took a lot of work for him to put together a night we all enjoyed so it’s not really fair to insinuate he was behind some conspiracy to get his friends through.

Let’s just agree it was a fun night doing something ridiculous that’s not worth anyone getting upset about and do it again in a year. (There’s your notification, Michael)

Alfonso – I’m just all butt-hurt because I wanted us to do some OMD shit or PSB together but you insisted at Velvet you weren’t doing it.

Now you’re kind of not my friend. Sorry.

Let ME weigh in on this.

The purpose of the event is to be badass. That’s it. It’s Karaoke!! not Kara-o.k. I thought everyone was pretty awesome. We did the first one because my birthday fell on Karaoke night and I wanted to Celebrate it with something bigger and better than normal. It’s a lot of work to put something together like that, and I almost didn’t do it, but I fucking LOVE karaoke. I wouldn’t have spent my mornings on vacation in Portland stressing myself out and e-mailing a million people for anything else. The way I set the judging up was simple. I find one person that’s a local celebrity type person to be a judge and then 2 other judges, last year was Paul and John from US Royalty with Zui from being friends with Paris Hilton. This Year was Scott Rattler with last years winners Jessica and Austin. There were at least 2 finalists that none of us including myself knew before the event. other then them qualifying the week before at sticky… If anything I was bummed that none of the contestants from LMW made it into the final, they were good! Neither Myself nor Russel Judged anything until the final song, and then we only judged crowd applause (which is really effing hard btw). Maybe next year I’ll think about a different judging mechanism but In my mind it will be team Champagne Supernova and if I’m lucky maybe I’ll get somebody truly awesome to be the Special Judge… Also Mickey “Hollywood “Fangs was not a judge at all he was just there to pound beers and look cool.

Also the roommate thing was the sticky rice house, so again I can see this causing confusion even though it had absolutely nothing to do with the competition.

Again the purpose of this event is more than a contest, it’s to send Karaoke to the next level, and if you saw that Awesome Robot move you would agree. It worked.

I thank Everyone who came out and raged or got their faces rocked off, Lily you were as always outrageous and awesome!

also further proof of the badassery. During my song we accidently soaked the TV in beer so the last 6 contestants and the semi final and final rounds were done only with my shitty slanted projector projecting on a side wall above the corwd, and I don’t remember anybody messing up. Bravo!

I wish there was a picture of me with Scott Rattler on my back though. That was awesome.

I do love BYT though. I’ve known all these kids for years. They are friends with everybody that puts on events. That’s how this website came about, if you see the same cast of characters it’s usually because they are the same people that like all that stuff and have known everybody for years. That’s how the world works. I’d like to get to know DCist a little better. Somebody introduce me.

1– I am loving the level headed and friendly debating within these comments as opposed to getting all hater-y and defense-y. Good form.
2– As unaffiliated audience member– I don’t think Nate at all meant to put a specific label on the cliquiness, but as a first-timer I definitely see the point that a whole lot of people on the stage in various capacities seemed to know each other. Which, though I understand it really didn’t change anything about the contest, did get noticed by some of us.
3– Good point about more women. Also, though I totally understood the sterotype that the metal head judge dudes were playing on- could done without the butt sex/ pedophilia jokes.

paul and I won because we are awesome. I have never been affiliated with byt. If you feel that we somehow cheated or were given special treatment then we challenge you to a karaoke duel. You pick the judges, you can even pick the songs. We will destroy any and all challengers. We fucking rule. So keep talking all that smack, you’re just mad your girlfriend sweats my chest hair.

As face-meltingly awesome as this night was, I gotta say that the judges, Andrew, the MC, rob and paul and a few others gave off a very clique-y vibe and that definitly took away from the night somewhat. Dont get me wrong, its not that the end result was bad- ‘Intergalactic’ practically blew my testicles off. Champagn spectacular had clearly prepared WAY more than everyone else and they rocked. This event is awesome and its awesome that y’all put so much effort in, we HAVE to do this every year. but it basically seemed like everyone onstage was in on it along with a few select performers, while they barely tolerated everyone else. Sadly, everyone I talked to felt the same, and i spoke with a lot of people, most of whom I did not know. I think its safe to say that most people not part of the “in” crowd felt this way. The judges/organizers gave off the “I’m a cool bartender and I only talk to my other bartender friends” vibe. Maybe its a Sticky-rice thing? Whatever, it was an awesome event. Anyway, Lilly’s “Born to run” blew my mind and for her to not make the semifinals was . . . suspicious. My 2 cents.

So, um, this was a totally fun event. As the only female semi-finalist and as someone who just moved from New York, a couple thoughts in response to some of the threads going here.

1. I just moved here 3 months ago. I don’t know any of these people, and I made it to the semi-finals. This is a small city, and everyone seems to know everyone as far as I can tell. I found the crowd was pretty welcoming.

2. Yeah, the event had a fratty vibe, but that was honestly as much the crowd as the judges. I mean, this town is a little fratty. There were bored-looking corporate shot girls on stage for chrissake.

There are just fewer genres women can pull off in a crowd like that; my act was straight rocker chick, which played well. But that also got me equated with a fellating Mary Lou Retton and my ass slapped on stage.

Also, I agree that Lilly was awesome, and it was a cryin shame that we were pitted against each other in the first round.