Good Weekend, plus, Remember This Video?

Well, I'm getting grief for being unable to top my "Come on Toshi" video from back in the day, so here's another just brilliant one. Yeah, it's been around before, but it's just so awesome, I thought I'd re-post it:

How's that, Jason?


Meanwhile, I had a good weekend.

Saw Bobby Kim on White Day/St. Patrick's day, and had the third-worst sangria so far on my mission to find the best sangria in Seoul, and bummed around a bunch with Girlfriendoseyo. Then on Sunday, I took her to Wolfhound for the first time, and got to enjoy watching her experience her first taste of the fantastic Wolfhound burger.

Now, I love Wolfhound, but I do have one gripe:

Dear Wolfhound Pub:

I like your place. I like your food. I like your beer. Your breakfast ain't too bad, either. However, I'm asking you to do one of three things:

Either
1. serve your coffee in a smaller mug, so that I don't feel ripped off by getting a coffee mug that's 40% full
2. fill your flurbing coffee mugs to the top, or at least near the top
3. charge less than three thousand won for four mouthfuls of coffee, when down the street, Rocky Mountain Tavern gives free coffee refills with all their breakfasts, and Starbucks gives nearly a PINT of coffee for a tiny bit more than the price of your tiny coffee puddle.

I like your food a lot, Wolfhound, but the paltry amount of coffee you serve to your poor, hung over customers on Sunday mornings, for THREE FREAKING THOUSAND WON, is, frankly, insulting, and every time I order a coffee from Wolfhound, I hate the place for a while, until my hamburger comes out. And it wouldn't take much to fix this problem. Just do it, and I'll love you forever.

Some pictures from a while back that I wanted to share:

Hey? Wanna get paid to be really good looking? VIOP has hired live people to model their little thingys instead of having them holler into microphones and do sexy dances... it was a bit surprising, but it sure gathered a crowd.

Mustve been boring as heck.

So the Seoul City Tour Bus got some sponsors... it's kind of bad planning, though, to have a poster on the side of the bus which obscures the view.
Yeah, you can see through it, but, uh, still...isn't this getting the priorities wrong for a tour bus trying to put Seoul on display as well as possible?

Other than that...

It's official. Girlfriendoseyo was asking me about the Canadian health-care system, and I couldn't answer her questions. I have been in Korea too long to be up on stuff back in Canada. Which is awkward when I'm regularly asked to speak for Canadian culture, as well as Western culture at large (jeez. What do I know about Denmark? How can I answer for all of "THE WEST"?)

also...
Get your hands on the old Hong Kong Movie "Master of the Flying Guillotine". Just do it.

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.