Party at the Noraebang

  

     Hello world, this is Angry Tofu speaking. Today I'm going to tell you about the wonderful phenomenon of Noraebang. Noraebang (노래방 in Korean) can literally be translated to mean "song room". It is a room in which there is a karaoke machine and several chairs for people to sit in. Although the setup sounds simple, Noraebang are immensely popular in Korea, where many adults go with colleagues after work dinners to sing their hearts out.
     So why am I talking about this? The reason is that I went to a Korean restaurant/noraebang this weekend. It was a party my mom put together. It was great. Fabulous. We all herded into this room filled with a couch and a gigantic table, and then tried to figure out the instructions on the remote, which were not in English. After a few unsuccessful attempts, we were able to get the contraption to work, and also discovered that every time a song started, the lights would turn off and a disco ball on the ceiling would start shining colored lights everywhere.
      The best part of all, however, was the television screen displaying the lyrics. For every song that started, a video would also play behind the lyrics. They showed at random, and had absolutely nothing to do with the song that was playing. The best part was that every single one was incredibly dramatic, usually involving car accidents and unrequited love, although it was impossible to be sure because we could only hear the incredibly loud music.
     Possibly the best song/video pairing, unintentionally of course, was when a friend of my mom's decided to sing "Deck the Halls". As soon as the song started up, so did the video. It was about a homeless man. Really? A video showing the grit and grime of street living behind the jaunty tune of a Christmas song? Even better was when, just as the chorus started up, the homeless man on the screen bent down and started smoking the remnants of cigarette butts that had been strewn on the ground. Nice.

So merry Christmas y'all, and I wish that each and every one of you finds your very own cigarette butt-smoking homeless guy.