Locals wouldn't mind so much if the karaoke performers could carry a tune.
Jerusalem, December 11 - Evidence indicates that the residents of the house across the street believe that municipal ordinances banning loud parties, music, machinery, and other cacophonies between the hours of eleven at night and seven in the morning suggest, rather than require, compliance, observers concluded today.
The Schlossbergs, consisting of a woman her sixties, her daughter in her thirties, and a son in his teens, appear to believe that Jerusalem noise restrictions do not apply to them, given the household's propensity for karaoke parties and other late-night revelry in their yard, neighbors surmise. Said revelry takes place several times each month, weather-permitting, in the family's ancestral home in the city's historic Nachlaot neighborhood, where other residents of the street and the one behind the Schlossberg property grapple with the need to get small children to sleep at a reasonable hour, and with a less-than-robust police response to noise complaints.
"No one could be that knowingly dismissive of the law," reasoned Simcha Ofer, whose four-year-old regressed to wetting his pants following too many nights with insufficient sleep and constant time outs at preschool from the temper tantrums born of the same cause. "They must think the noise regulations simply don't apply to them, or are not really binding, like Reform Jews and God's commandments or something."
Other neighbors take a less circumspect view. "I think they know and don't care," spat next-door resident Sasha Menuhin, 68. "Back in Soviet Union, no one would dare. One call to KGB and goodbye karaoke. Anyone who even used word 'karaoke' after such incident would find one-way ticket to Lefortovo Prison. Or maybe more squalid militia jail. Okay, more likely militia jail. KGB had bigger fries to fish. Point is, authorities took peace and quiet seriously, not like joke of municipality and police here. Not all things about old regime were bad."
Menuhin believes the Schlossbergs have a family connection within the Moriah Precinct of the police who arranges for noise complaints to disappear. "'Protektzia' is word Hebrew got from Russian," he observed with a rueful shake of the head. "I am familiar with concept."
The Schlossbergs' neighbors insist that they might not mind so much if the people performing the karaoke next next door could carry a tune. "It sounds like someone's being tortured," complained Suzi Maayan. "Do their ears not process that the sounds their mouths are making don't match the tune they heard, or even the other sounds their mouths just made?"
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