{"id":5914,"date":"2007-01-19T17:00:38","date_gmt":"2007-01-19T22:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5914"},"modified":"2010-07-16T08:48:29","modified_gmt":"2010-07-16T12:48:29","slug":"karaoke-snapshots-from-last-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5914","title":{"rendered":"Karaoke Snapshots"},"content":{"rendered":"

— Lisa<\/a>, I have just found the spot where I will take you to do karaoke when you finally get your ass here. This place is beyond description.<\/p>\n

And I will now describe it.<\/p>\n

— It is 5 floors up in a ratty-looking grey building in Korea Town. You would not know it is there. There’s a sign out front saying “Music Studio – 5th floor” – but it’s like a sandwich board, not a neon sign. The building looks like an office building.<\/p>\n

That’s because it IS an office building.<\/p>\n

— You go in – normal office hallway, and get into the elevator with other people going to regular offices – and you go to the 5th floor. You get out. You are in a dingy hallway. It is industrial-grey, a long line of closed grey metal doors. This is not a plush-carpeted office. You follow the pointed arrow signs saying “KARAOKE” down this dingy grey hall – and some of the doors are open on either side. I peek in as I walk by and see flashes of things … an office filled with bolts of fabric … and a small man sitting at a sewing machine. There are other karaoke joints in New York that are, you know, storefronts – with regular bars – and you can rent little rooms in the back, and it all feels KIND of like going to a bar. Except you also do karaoke. THIS was totally different.<\/p>\n

— This place is BYOB. Mkay? Weird. So we had gone into the Korean grocery across the street beforehand and bought a couple six packs, as well as 2 huge cans of Korean beer apiece. We were all set.<\/p>\n

— At the end of dingy grey metal hallway – you come into what looks like … Oh, let me try to put it into words. There was so much that was incongruous so let me just tell you the different elements in the room:<\/p>\n

1. Tile floor, like an elementary school, or any bureaucratic City of New York office – bleak, grey, nondescript.<\/p>\n

2. There was a huge old-fashioned fire-engine-red phone booth standing in the corner. The phone itself was canary yellow.<\/p>\n

3. There was a desk – behind which stood our Karaoke Enployee.<\/p>\n

4. There was a refrigerator where you could buy Sprite, or orange juice.<\/p>\n

5. There was a large TV suspended from the ceiling and an Usher video was playing over and over and over … with no sound.<\/p>\n

6. Beyond this main area – was a long Alice in Wonderland corridor – with numbered doors on either side. Behind each door was a karaoke room.<\/p>\n

We were the only customers in the joint. We were the only customers in the joint for the entire night<\/i> and we were there for hours. It was hysterical. I’d leave “our room” to go find the bathroom or whatever, and then as I returned I could HEAR our vocal shenanigans from down that damn hallway – I could HEAR my friends shrieking “OH- OH LIVIN’ ON A PRAYYER … ” It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. We were in that room and we were all TOTALLY unselfconscious – just singing and drinking and howling with laughter and dancing around … and it was only when I walked outside that I realized … Wow. We’re actually out in the world right now …<\/p>\n

— In the room there was a ring of padded couches, a table in the middle. We strewed our beer cans across the table. Above us was a multi-colored disco light – that was somehow attached (rhythmically) to whatever song we were singing. It was a robot light – turning, dipping – coloring the air. Oh – and there were also black lights. So we turned off all the lights. Our teeth gleamed. The karaoke books gleamed.<\/p>\n

— We drank. We sang. We laughed so hard we cried. We got SO INTO what we were doing. Nobody was a killjoy.<\/p>\n

— Oh! And I forgot to mention this: each room comes with two tambourines.<\/p>\n

These karaoke owners know how to party.<\/p>\n

We had so much fun with those tambourines. You have not experienced a Metallica song until you’ve heard it with a bit of tambourine shimmering in the background.<\/p>\n

— We could not stop. We could have gone on for hours … but finally … we had to say, “Okay. It’s 11 pm. Time to go home.” Oh, and you pay by the hour. That’s where they get ya.<\/p>\n

— I had no idea how hard “La La” was (by Ashlee Simpson, shame on me that I know that, but I love that song) until I tried to sing it. Holy crap. If you think I’m lying, try to sing it. Try to sing it. I dare ya.<\/p>\n

— The duet version of Judas Priest’s “Painkiller” that we were treated to will live on in my memory.<\/p>\n

FOREVER.<\/p>\n

— As a group – we all did a pretty kick-ass “Creep”. I have to say. We rocked that song to its heart.<\/p>\n

— I loved it when one of us would make a mistake with entering the number of the song we wanted – and then some random song would come on instead – a song which none of us had chosen … and yet somebody always <\/i>stepped up to sing it. Hilarious. Like: “Okay, I hadn’t PLANNED on singing ‘Just the Way You Are’ tonight – but here I am doing so!”<\/p>\n

I never realized how many songs I know.<\/p>\n

— I also never realized how many songs I THINK I know but really only know the chorus to.<\/p>\n

— Nirvana never gets old. At one point during “Lithium” I glanced around and all of us – literally all of us – were thrashing about. Thrashing! Singing at the tops of our lungs, yes, but also – just THRASHING. In the black light.<\/p>\n

— “Hopelessly Devoted to You” is an unbelievably awesome song.<\/p>\n

— Oh – and we were all women. It was so hilarious – there were times when it felt like the best slumber party EVER. With grown women. And Korean beer. And tambourines.<\/p>\n

— HOURS later, with aching throats, we walked down the dingy grey hallway – all the doors closed now … sewing man gone home … went down the elevator … and out into the rainy night. Out onto the dingy busy streets of Korea Town.<\/p>\n

You’d never know what psychedelic awesome SHRIEKING fun is to be had on the 5th floor of that dank stained building on 32nd Street in between 5th and Broadway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

— Lisa, I have just found the spot where I will take you to do karaoke when you finally get your ass here. This place is beyond description. And I will now describe it. — It is 5 floors up … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[600,161,1367],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5914"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5914"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21573,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5914\/revisions\/21573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}