Saturday night presented me with my first-ever private room karaoke experience.  I didn’t know that was even a thing here.  Sure, I remember that scene from Lost in Translation, but it seemed the kind of wacky and crazy thing one does in Tokyo, not necessarily in the midwestern United States.  But I was wrong- Korea Town in Chicago has its very own private-room karaoke establishment (surprising), and one of John’s school friends is a regular (even more surprising), and a huge group of people decided that would be the perfect way to spend a Saturday night (most surprising) so off we went.

It was, of course, hilarious.  We crammed into a tiny room with couches built into the wall and three big flat panel tvs.  Every time a song came on, above they lyrics, animated asian avatars wearing skimpy hip hop outfits would do hip hop dances.  (Which, incidentally, leads to one of my questions: why, exactly, is hip hop dancing the default here?  It is tremendously strange to see hip hop dancing asian avatars rockin it out while your friend sings a heartfelt rendition of “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers.)

Probably 2/3 of the song choices were in Korean, which was obviously sort of limiting for our crowd of non-Koreans.  But there was one book of “pop” selections from which we could make our choices.  The selection, though, was puzzling.  For example: did you know that the band Hoobastank has more than one song?  And that six of them are available as karaoke choices?  But Son of a Preacher Man by Dusty Springfield (a classic if there ever was one) is not?  What is up with that?

Or take The Eagles.  Witchy Woman? Available. Hotel California? Not.  Really?  Not a John Mellancamp song to be found, Cougar years or otherwise, but a half dozen choices from System of a Down.  Large selection of Christian rock ballads, but no Britney Spears.  It was….limiting.

Fortunately for me, they had Alone, which (in case any of you were wondering) is a real crowd pleaser that will definitely get people singing along.  Also I learned that I know all the words to Crazy In Love and am available to jump in and bail out any friends who choose that song only to learn after starting that they, in fact, do not.  Plus, I discovered that my husband secretly likes Weezer, and he and I busted out with a truly classic off-key rendition of Buddy Holly.  (The “ooh oohs” were particularly imprecise, but whatever, we were aweseome.)

On the whole, a surprisingly fun way to pass an evening.  I just wish I could un-see that girl avatar in a school girl outfit so short you could see her little animated underpants, working it out to Eleanor Rigby.