Sometimes you find yourself hanging out with your friends who will be leaving New York soon, getting some dinner and then going to see a few bands, all the while getting spectacularly wasted. So far so good. But then, then you go get a private room at Sing Sing Karaoke on St. Marks Place, a place that is hella busted, and things take a turn towards danger, or as they say in Japanese, "Sing Singのカラオケはすごいあぶないだよね!"
The danger is this: someone will take your awesomely dependable Droid phone. Yes, after you've spent the evening taking pictures/video of your friends swappin' slop with their lovahs, dancing epileptically to the live music, skinning their knees trying to get into cabs, and then singing "Magic" by Olivia Newton-John relentlessly into the microphone long after the actual song has finished—someone will crash your party and kidnap your phone for selfish, probably disgusting reasons that don't bear thinking about.
Then when you get all the way home to Brooklyn at 3 in the morning and discover you don't have your phone and you use Jimmy's phone to call Sing Sing to ask that they check the room you were in, the criminally unhelpful lady on the phone will tell you that she can't disturb the party that is currently in the room. Now, on the one hand, you understand this uniquely Japanese policy, because karaoke makes people mean and violent. But on the other hand, WTF, asshole, go get my phone from those thieves!
There is a lesson to be learned from this. The lesson is not "Don't get wasted and then expect to be able to keep track of your phone as you take it in and out of your jacket pocket to take dumb photos/video." The lesson is "If you do all that, don't go to Sing Sing Karaoke."
Lesson learned.
