K-popcorn

A just because invitation for a night built around a queue of comeback stages, a borrowed television and a bowl of popcorn that never gets to sit still. Guests arrive in costume, which here means an outfit reverse engineered from a music video: a sequin jacket, a pleated skirt, one earring. Light sticks come from four different groups and nobody pretends otherwise. The overhead light goes off before the first track.

The chant is the part people underestimate. Names in order, on the beat, and the room is half a second behind until the third song. By then someone has pushed the coffee table back to attempt the point choreography in front of the hallway mirror, the caramel popcorn is gone and the salted is not, and a debate about the best title track of the last five years has started at the counter. It ends with the same video played twice.