The UCC Music Video Thing

I'd be interested to know which song started this whole fan music video imitating choreography thing... but it's sure fun.

You might know the Beyonce song "Single Ladies" which is everywhere right now, and the video's getting about a bajillion hits. Well the song, and the dance, is so catchy, that a bajillion MORE people are making their own versions of the song.

Here's the original.


Here's the fan version I like the best so far.


And let's not forget Justin Timberlake going wild on SNL.



This is not the first fan ucc video craze: just here in Korea, there was the "tell me" dance -- one of the genius moves of the WonderGirls' producer, the spectacularly not-handsome JYP (seen here with his face in a backup dancer's crotch) is coming up with dances that are cool and distinctive, but also easy enough for people to try to learn.

Here's the Wondergirls' Tell Me, for any of you who have forgotten.


And there were a zillion imitations of this one, too, among them...this one.


Which leads to horrific train wrecks like these.


Girls' Generation had to get in on the action, and I like the self-awareness of this video's intro, where they start out as indistinguishable mannequins before they come to life as indistinguishable mannequins that can dance. The song's catchy, with a driving beat, and another cute but not-too-hard dance that people can learn in their jazz-dance class at the health club -- kind of the choreographer's equivalent of the way many modern church praise songs are written to be played with simple chords, so that near-novice guitarists can still play them competently (see also: the vocal difficulty of every Korean Trot song ever written).


And then there were UCC versions like this: not that skilled, but must have taken those boys a lot of work and time.


or the rock version, the (actually pretty good) traditional instruments arrangement or the most common: the either inept, or mechanical living room webcam.

I wonder about the origins of this fancam music video thing, and where it all started...

I've been wrong before, but I think it might have started (or at least become cool outside Korea) with Michael Jackson's Thriller dance, which still pops up from time to time, in increasingly clever/random ways.

There was the just plain weird Bollywood thriller.


Prison Thriller


A couple of wedding thrillers.

And my personal favorite: the Tube Thriller.

Imagine being on this car.


And wait for it... how about this one. So nerdy it flips back and becomes epically cool. Imagine having the story of winning a Star Wars Dance-off by doing The Thriller as Darth Vader in your pocket: nobody'd know whether to give you a wedgie or buy you a beer.


Anyway, post your favorite Girls Generation, Wondergirls, or Thriller fan version in the comments. See if you can top Darth Vader.

Have a good day, my lovely readers.

WTF? A Korea Times Cartoonist Capable of Irony? Oh. Unintentional.

source
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that the comic portraying Obama supposedly casting ideology out of the realm of science, chooses to portray the archaic and anti-scientific ideologues as a dinosaur...


when one of their biggest ideological flash-points was the teaching of creation and evolution in school, along with the denial of dinosaurs' existence by some?

Portraying anti-scientific ideologues as dinosaurs would be kind of like portraying Salem's Puritans as warlocks, wouldn't it?

Korean fusion food. A-MAyonnaiZ-ING!

Now, anybody who spends long enough here knows about Korean restaurants' tendency to put (sometimes a lot of) mayonnaise or sweet mustard sauce on just about any food that is not considered "Korean". It's one of those funny quirks that keeps you on your toes anytime you're in a fusion or foreign restaurant here.

Well, if you read Zenkimchi's Andong post, you'll know that my new favorite thing is complaining to restauranteurs in pidgin Korean.

You'll be happy to know that while there is tons of good food to be eaten in Seoul, there are also ample opportunities to practice my new hobby.

Today I went to a restaurant and ordered a seafood salad. Wanted something fresh, you know?

Dear readers, the thing came swimming in so much sweet mustard/mayonnaise sauce that I couldn't even taste the shredded cabbage. (And you know, you could read that sentence and probably guess that I was in Korea, even if you knew nothing about this blog whatsoever). I actually got out the tissues and dabbed away the excess sauce, because it was so egregiously over-sauced, and built up no small mountain of sopping, saccharine napkins in doing so. (Photos when I get home and download them off my crappy cameraphone). Even so, there was still a puddle of sauce in the bottom of the bowl. It made me feel a bit nauseous looking at how much mayonnaise I could have consumed.

Thanks to crappy cameraphone the second, it's hard to see the veritable pool of sauce still in the bottom of the bowl.

And that was after removing this many napkins' worth of sauce, already.




This was a restaurant I used to like, too, until a few bad choices in background music (speed techno doesn't help me relax and enjoy my food, as awesome as Lee Jung Hyun is in other contexts), and this mayonnaise debacle left, um, a sour taste in my mouth.

Lee Jung Hyun: Wah. Try tucking in to a nice california roll with this on in the background.


However, not to be deterred, I got out my cellphone dictionary (after taking some gross-out pictures of the mayonnaise soup in the bottom of my bowl), and finally looked up the word "taste" and the structure "could/couldn't taste". When I went to pay, I was very proud of myself for saying, in broken Korean, "Too much sauce. I couldn't taste the vegetables."

Yep. After all that talk about complaining expats, I'm learning to complain in Korean.

Look out, world!

The Andong Trip at Zenkimchi

For those of you who can't wait for me to finish writing it up, Joe at Zenkimchi has written a nice account of the Andong Trip that's loaded with details about Joe's bowels pictures. Go check it out if you like.

Random photos...

Myeongdong Department Store is not a nice place to be on a Saturday afternoon.

It wasn't so much the crowding, as constantly getting jostled.


And not to go for the cheap shot or anything, but... yeah. As it pertains to being jostled when a split second's worth of patience and a hair's breadth of personal consideration could have prevented it... I will go for the cheap shot. See, stereotypes having been taken into account, last time I was in Beijing, the "have manners in public" campaign was still working, and every time we took public transportation, even though the Olympics were half a year past, people STILL waited outside the subway car for those inside to get out, before trying to pile in. Will Seoul need to have ANOTHER freaking Olympics for people to decide to start respecting the personal space of those around them? I was bumped, unnecessarily, a little less than once a minute, the whole time I was in the Lotte underground shopping center, and brothers and sisters, I'm never going back there again, like, ever.

meh. I'm not always this irritable. Maybe it's the yellow dust, or the fact Lotte Department store's food section is underground, and the added claustrophobia of no sunlight + low ceiling PLUS crowding is what set me off, but...
Lotte Department Store Myeongdong is an unpleasant place. Don't go there on the weekend.

Next: Brian discussed the way white males were absent in many ads for English classes, so I wanted to add this photo (for Pagoda) to the collection. (Taken in Myeongdong).

The female could be Korean... but she also could be non-Korean, between her coloration and the ambiguity of eye-shape a profile shot affords. Anyway, in conclusion, Korea is a land of contrasts. Thank you for reading my paper.

Something I saw in China: apparently Korea's not the only country stealing movie poster ideas.

Does this poster for a Chinese movie look familiar to you?
It should.

In other wackiness: in case you really needed a teddybear phone ornament that expressed your love for brand names, the day is yours: not only can you have a teddy dressed up in Louis Vuitton...
You can even choose your colour!

I saw "Old Partner" today with Girlfriendoseyo. It was great. I also saw this movie poster:

I hate when people use that face.
And it's usually only used when somebody wants something. Especially in tv dramas.

Speaking of TV dramas where people make mopey faces, in case you felt like you didn't have enough "Flowers Before Boys" memorabilia yet, you can get these socks.

I was flabbergasted a little while ago, not only to see the "Our boys are prettier than flowers" poster selling Bean Pole clothes in Coex subway station, but to see four Japanese tourists huddling together and ogling it reverentially. I guess they'd reached the goal of their pilgrimage: the land where flower boys sell overpriced clothing!

Went to a really nice spanish restaurant in Hongdae, and the caption selling Sangria to us sounded like it might have been written by the guy who usually works for Tourism Korea.

These cute shoes were at the flea market. They say "Left food" and "right food" - correction: that should be "left foot" and "right foot" -- the dangers of writing in a rush.

Seoul Tower in Lights

Hermit Hideaways draws our attention to these amazing pictures of Namsan, Seoul Tower, in downtown Seoul, washed in light. Here are two.

Ack! Busy

Hey folks. I haven't forgotten about you...I'm just busy as heck, and running all over Andong last weekend, while fun as anything (thanks to everyone who came out) wiped me out for the next week of balmy days, nights that cool down too much, maintenance at The Hub of Sparkle, and, you know, classes.

Happy birthday, Gord. Also you, Anila, my lovely little sister.

Matt VV: holy cow, man! Thanks for playing Spritualized for me: they've been rocking my planet every moment I've had to be near a pair of speakers or headphones!



Meanwhile, the write-up on the Andong trip is in the workings...but I'm not sure yet when it'll be finished. Here's a bunch of the bestest photos, though, to keep you interested.

Dosan Seowon (one of the most important confucian academies in Korean history: it's on the 1000 won bill, and prominent on the old 1000 won note).













In and around Hahoe Folk Village



This is the same place I took one of my favorite pictures ever, last October.
Remember this?


Some fake folk village near the Andong dam.

In and around downtown Andong:

Brick pagodas are special.

Good times, dear readers. Good times. To everyone who came out: thanks for showing up!

More later...if possible.

Got back from Andong.

It was great.

But until I have time to write up the trip, here's something to tide you over.

At The Hub Of Sparkle, Stafford mentioned the new Korean 50 000 won note coming out soon in Korea, and asked for readers to contribute humourous suggestions for what could be on the 50000 banknote.

Here is my own contribution. Why not this.



or maybe this
However, I have it on good authority that, never ones to be left behind, North Korea has responded to the bank of Korea's change in currency with a 50 000 won note of their own.

Here are the two designs under consideration

Here's for you, Melissa and Joy: Roboseyo Blogs Music

See, if I started writing about music, it'd take over the blog pretty easily... but Melissa inspired me, with her "25 Musical Facts About Me," to add my final word to that silly 25 Facts About You thing that's going around on Facebook... (and meanwhile, Joy always mentions that she and I ought to talk about music sometime)...

but not before I say this:

Listen, you goofballs (and I know it's the same people...plus a few of your younger counterparts). Remember seven years ago, when your friends staged an intervention, and told you to stop sending E-MAIL forwards to all of them, all the time? And how some of them threatened to cut ties with you entirely...

SENDING FACEBOOK NOTES AND ZOMBIE BITES IS EXACTLY THE SAME THING.

The difference between forwarding "Timmy the Brain Tumor" e-mails in 1997 and tagging people in facebook notes which require them to do something and tag others, or sending them zombie bites, vampire bites, pirate bites, or WHATEVER, is equal to the difference between taking a piece of crap and wrapping it in a PLASTIC box, and wrapping the same piece of crap in a CARDBOARD box. It's just as annoying, and I'm just as not going to do it.

OK. That being said...

Here are, not 25 stupid facts about myself, instead,
25 Songs that Make Rainbows Burst Out My Eyelids.


Here they are: in No Particular Order
Tom Waits - Hold On
Radiohead - Thinking About You
Propellorheads - History Repeating
Magnetic Fields - Busby Berkeley Dreams
Jens Lekman - Your Beat Kicks Back Like Death
The Polyphonic Spree - It's The Sun
The Arcade Fire - Neighbourhood #1 - Tunnels
Andrew Bird - Fake Palindromes
Neko Case - I Wish I Was the Moon Tonight
Tegan and Sara - Call it Off
Buddy Rich (and his band) - The Beat Goes On
The Mountain Goats - This Year
String Quartet plays Radiohead - Motion Picture Soundtrack
White Stripes - I'm Slowly Turning Into You
Yeasayer - Red Cave
Jens Lekman - People Who Hate People
Do, Make, Say, Think - Frederica
Lucas - With the Lid Off
Antony & The Johnsons - Bird Gerhl
Angela McCluskey - Famous Blue Raincoat
Nina Simone - Suzanne
Blind Melon - Soup
Wolf Parade - I'll Believe in Anything
Feist - Mushaboom
Stan Rogers - Barrett's Privateers

Most of these were dependent on their availability on Youtube, and there are a hundred other songs I love which I could substitute in for any one of these, but those are twenty five songs that make me glee.



and I'm NOT TAGGING ANYONE.

Roboseyo's K-blog Of The Month for February '09...before it runs out. Dongchim.

Well, better toss one of these up before the month expires.

I'm going to Andong this weekend, and I'm preparing for that, while slogging through my two hardest workdays of the week (Turds day and Fried day suck for me).

However, I'll drop in a quick recommendation for the K-blog of the month before I go, and I'm pleased that this might actually be a very little-known one.

See, I was thinking about giving it to Eat Your Kimchi, seeing as they took home a handful of Golden Klog Awards...but they already got lots of attention from me earlier this month, during Golden Klog Voting and such. They have a blog, a wildly popular youtube channel (maybe that's where all their votes came from: over 500 subscribers on Youtube), a podcast, and have been putting out some really top-notch stuff.

Instead, I lay before you, someone you probably HAVEN'T heard of, because it's a very new blog (almost too new to even have appeared on the golden Klogs), but has been putting some really funny stuff out: Ladies and Gentlemen, Dongchim

Now, Dongchim, any teacher of children knows, is when a kid (hopefully a kid: grown-ups who give dongchim are best avoided) makes a little two-handed gun shape with their two index fingers, sneaks up behind you, and tries to ram those fingers right up your bung. Like this.


Apparently, Dongchim is an important enough part of Korean culture to make a statue of it.

Yech.


You can play the game here, if you like, but I'm going to make you agree you're a weirdo to do it. "By clicking this link to play the dongchim game, I fully confess and acknowledge that I'm a weirdo. Weirdy weird weirdo."

But Dongchim the blog is more than just a pair of intrusive digits: it's a comedy site that's putting out some clever material so far.

My favorite so far is the report of Buddhists frustrated on their path to enlightenment flocking to Korean convenience chain store "Buy The Way" in order to purchase what they could not find through mediation and renunciation. "Desperate Buddhists Flock to Local Convenience Stores".

The site's only about two months old, so it won't take you long to go through the archives. I, for one, am glad to see new comedy blogs coming out on the K-blogosphere: as great as they are, one can only go through the Yangpa and the other Yangpa and the really old Yangpa's archives so often before wishing for new material. Fortunately Party Pooper still updates.

The other satiric K-blog I like these days is Dokdo Is Ours, but he/she/they have also had enough promotion from the golden Klogs, that it's Dongchim's turn.