Karaoke at Orchid - Los Angels, CA

I thought Karaoke was sort of weird and something only drunk or super vain people do while drunk. However, it was Avicado's birthday and he was having a Karaoke birthday party at Orchid. I trust his judgement and I'm always up for an adventure, broken or not, and I didn't make any plans… so I figured why not.

Other than a couple of bars nights that had they're Karaoke machine pushed to the side, I had never been to a Karaoke bar so I was expecting just anther bar with a couple of different bar areas and a lonely looking Karaoke machine sitting in the middle. What I walked into was something so completely different that it looked like a movie set opened to mundane customers for a night.

The elevator doors opened into what looked like the reception area of a dance studio with formally dressed waiters. I inquired about my party group and was told room 16, 3^rd door on the left. I walked past large bay windows to a large Karaoke room where there was disco lights peeking out from curtained shades. In the next room, I saw a lively teenager standing on the table doing his impression to some rock metal song complete with air guitar. Than I finally reached Studio 16

Apparently I was only a few minutes late as 2 enthusiastic soon to be Karaoke singers actively wrote down song numbers and exclaimed several times "They have XXX, I can't believe it!"

The attendee after me asked what one particular song was and the enthusiastic soon to be Karaoke singer exclaimed "ohhh you'll find out"

Studio 16 had a multiple screens playing a variety of different videos and commercials. The karaoke song words appear in the middle screen while videos played on the other monitors, some of which heinously matched the words without trying to. Such as when two ducks were in a lake and one duck was rapidly poking at the duck in front of him in a rather suggestive manner during the song "You Give Love A Bad Name". Yea, that would give love a rather bad name if I had someone constantly poking at me from behind with his beak. Especially if he hadn't killed dinner for me first!

Than there was there Japanese animation characters dancing during Dio's Don't Talk To Strangers and Green Day's America Idiot song and acted out by Avicado's roommate.

As everyone was drinking, we eventually had to use the bathroom. This is where a little traveling would have been helpful. The bathrooms were modern Japanese culture style women toilets. As one of the guest announced to everyone in the room…

"If you want a very thoroughly clean bathroom experience, go to the bathroom. "

I'm going to be polite here….

In Japan, these bidets (state of the art toilets) are commonly called Washlets have heated toilet seats and wash the anus and or vulva of the user (including a number of pulsating and massaging functions) and gives the user the option of using the blow dryer type function afterwards with warm air. It was pretty different and being the curious Libra that I am, I tried it. For someone not use to it, it's weird but also cool. I totally dig having one of those in my home.

..

I learned that I have no talent for singing but I had a blast singing with the others. There was just as many femmes as bois and the gurls I think had more fun. Some very girly songs were chosen and the other femmes avidly encouraged the other femmes to get up and or sing along.

While this isn't something I would have chosen, everyone, including myself had a blast! Avicado was as cute as a button singing and sexy dancing to Come Together and the two much younger women were adorable. Even those who hate the sound of our "singing" voice sung a song and joined in with others. With ages ranging from early 20's to late 60's, a couple of people surprised the rest of us with exceptional voices or knowing the words to a song to a current or very classic song. I think I would try that again.