By Gina Angostura
Columnist

The first rule of book club: don’t talk about book club.

But I’m stepping outside the rules just this once to talk about a woman in my book club who told me about a new and exciting way to meet men – karaoke.

That’s right, the same fun weekend activity enjoyed by traveling Japanese businessmen around the world.

Apparently, my friend said, there is this whole underground karaoke circuit, where people move from venue to venue, acting out their fantasies of being some famous singer – Frank Sinatra, Shania Twain, a random Back Street Boy – depending on their musical ability, or lack thereof.

I’m thinking that most end up sounding like William Hung singing “She Bang,” but hey, I’ve never done it, so who am I to judge?

My friend says all kinds of men come up to you after you sing, telling you how great you sound. All you have to do is get up, sing 16 bars, and pull in the net. She met her current boyfriend that way, she tells me.

I’ve also heard of people actually proposing while singing karaoke. Seriously? A guy gets up, sings “Achy, Breaky Heart” and the girl says yes?

Well, then, they deserve each other, don’t they?

I’m betting in 10 years, tops, they’ll be citing Billy Ray Cyrus under “irreconcilable differences.”

That’ll be a funny story to tell the grandkids, huh? “Your grandpa proposed to me by singing to me at a karaoke bar.”

It’ll have the same cultural resonance as did proposing to someone in the ’70s by asking the DJ at the roller disco to play “Xanadu” while you whirled your girl around the floor, both of you in matching rainbow-striped suspenders.

Besides, I’ve heard karaoke is bad for your health. According to a study in the International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics (I have

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a subscription. They have an awesome horoscope), the noise level in these places is high enough to do serious damage to your hearing. Kind of explains the singing ability of many participants.

But who needs to sing in public to get a date? A better idea would be for people to have a personal karaoke machine they can carry around to help them become more romantically adept. You know, like in “The Terminator,” where Arnold was able to look around and his cool bionic eye would give him data, including what to say, on an internal readout screen. We could call it the Personal Karoke 3000. It’ll be the Cyrano de Bergerac of the 21st century.

Think about it. A man comes up to a woman at a party. He’s nervous; he doesn’t know what to say. He begins to sweat, which in turn, activates the PK3. Up pops the screen:

“Forgive me, but I’d regret it always if I didn’t speak to a woman of your obvious wit and charm, let alone your beauty, which speaks for itself.”

(Is that the best I could come up with? Can you tell I’ve never heard a good line in my life? Well, it beats, “Hey, babe, you single?”)

Listen, I’m willing to do a lot of things to enhance my datability. I watch the news to keep up on current events so I can make intelligent conversation. Well, OK, I watch “The Daily Show.” Same thing.

I go to the gym so I don’t get winded walking up the stairs at Shorty’s.

I spend more money on my hair than some Third World countries spend on education. But karaoke? I’m not that desperate.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the shower, practicing “Who Let the Dogs Out,” which, I found, appears on every top 100 karaoke song list.