西洋오랑캐

Please indulge me in this brief detour from the stream of consciousness entries based on my family’s trip to Korea, but I have a quick note I need to deliver to all the Dads in the world save for my Dad…and I suppose my father-in-law as well.

Hey dads! You see that t-shirt?! That shirt is for the number 1 dad in all the world, and guess what: You ain’t it! That’s right suckers, you might have had a pretty decent year, but this time it’s my dad that’s going to get to go on stage and tell everyone how he couldn’t have done it with Cameron Crowe and his co-stars, and above all else Jebus, and also get this awesome shirt!

So what’s my dad got that none of the other dads had? Plan and simple: Class! And nothing says class like a shirt proclaiming, “I’m the man!” I know my dad’s going to be all modest and say something like, “Nah, I’m not the man…I’m just a man.” But I say don’t be modest Dad! You truly are the man! So enjoy this awesome t-shirt. Happy Father’s Dad and junk!

孔子曰: “I don’t know what smells worse: the dog crap on the subway or the artifical banana scent perfume some girl was wearing on the bus.”

I was never bad at math persay, but I was not overly interested in the numerical arts and therefore after taking my general education required math courses in my first year of college I stopped studying anything number related,* and you know how the saying goes, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” For this reason I now need a calculator to do even the most basic math functions. That being said, I am completely unable to solve these word problems…so I’m turning it over to any mathamagicians that may be in the audience. Be sure to show all work.

1. A bus seat can seat 5 people in comfortable fashion. The bus seat has 4 Korean men each approximately 5′9″ and 160-170 pounds, and 1 American man approximately 6′2″ and 180 pounds. Under what laws of physics does the American take up the least amount of space?

2. A bus is traveling at 100km per hour and turns a corner. What amount of centripetal force must be present to make it acceptable for the old man falling out of the seat to grab my crotch to prevent himself from falling on his ass?

* In reality I did study some number related materials such as these 漢字: 千, 萬, 億 but we’re just spliting hairs now…

Good lord, that title looks like it should be attached to some horribly boring academic piece appearing in a stuffy academic journal about Asia! For those of you that could not tell by the frequent profanity and use of such expressions as “get my grub / eat / chow on,” we here at Kimchi & Me are far removed from the academics, peer reviews, and more often than not, reality. So what we are presenting today is something completely different.

As regular readers are already aware all Korea pop groups have to have some sort of gimmic. According to my friend, who is currently a law student at a university in Seoul, this is required under Korean law. Again, regular readers already know my stance on these gimmics, but for those of you that did not click any of the links above, let me give a brief review of my stance: I think all these gimmics are stupid. At this time I would like to modify my previous stance.

I recently became aware of a new singing group known as LPG. LPG stands for Long Pretty Girls (I don’t know what it really means either). This group first caught my attention not because they could sing particularly well, or their song was particularly memorable, but because I was informed that all the members were former Miss Koreas. While this report seems to be slightly exaggerated (two were in the Miss Korea contest but didn’t appear to win, another was in some unrelated beauty pagent, and the fourth seemed to be from some alternate reality Miss Korea contest), all the members are / were beauty queens and that’s what’s really important isn’t it?

See? There’s not a hag in the bunch of them! I can here you dissidents in the audience already, “But Wyatt, there are a lot of other singing groups out there…do we really need singing beauty queens?”

Yes, yes we do, especially when they are attempting to bring the can can to Korea! That’s right kids, in a world where most actor / singers stay in either the light weight pop song or the “I’m a total skank,” musical genres these women (or their musical overlords) are attempting to bring in a foreign style of dance / music that is nearly 200 years old. You have to give them some credit for that especially when the can can presents such awesomeness as this:

孔子曰: When dancing the can can in hotpants be sure to wear underwear with a smaller surface area that of the shorts you are wearing.

That’s right kids, these ladies are bringing the can can out of burlesque houses of 19th century France and into the living rooms of 21st century South Korea. For those of you that actually want to see and hear this all nonsense in action I present unto you, LPG bringing you 캉캉 (Kang Kang)! Enjoy!

孔子曰: Hey girl! I see you standing over there…mini-skirt, thigh high boots, Louis Vuitton bag clutched in your hand, silky and gleaming hair, face totally made up. Let me let you in on a little secret, none of that stuff makes you any hotter while your friend is holding your hair back as you puke in the street by the subway exit.

Last night I had the strangest dream. I was in my childhood home with my brother, only neither of us were children. Anyhow in this dream my brother and I were engaged in mortal kombat combat, in the living room of this old house, and somehow my brother was kicking my ass.

At one point in the dream, I tried to hit him with a roundhouse kick, but my brother was able to counter by swinging a jump rope and hitting my kicking leg with the handle. As he pummeled me I grabbed a wrapping paper tube (aka a huge toilet paper tube), and tried to defend myself, but was unsuccessful until Omar and Cedric of The Mars Volta appeared at my house and proceeded to attack my brother and I with Super Nintendo controllers.

Being attacked in our own home by The Mars Volta was more than we could bear, so my brother and I put aside our differences and teamed up to beat down The Mars Volta. It was like Double Dragon 2, only with a jump rope and a wrapping paper tube instead of “tire” and “box.” Having dispatched the Mars Volta, my brother and I proceeded to play some Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo.

I only mention this because when I woke up this morning, I figured something else must have been a dream. You see, last night before I went to sleep I checked my e-mail to find a message from a men’s magazine in Europe that was interested in having me write an article about Seoul. This morning, I figured that this too was a bizarre figment on my imagination, so I checked my mail again. Turns out someone really does want me to write an article, so I guess shortly I’ll be a published author…something to add to my resume. Now if you’ll excuse me I have a deadline to meet.

Prior to leaving America, I formulated a theory about the uncanny relationship between Korea and the state of New Jersey. Allow me to explain.

1. New Jersey and Korea share similar latitudes.

2. New Jersey and Korea have an spookily similar shape. Examine if you will the following side by side comparison.

Jersey and Korea

3. Ask any Korean you know if they have relatives in America. If they do chances are these relatives will dwell in New Jersey (or L.A. but that doesn’t work with my theory).

4. Both are fairly polluted places (well Seoul and the Jersey Shore anyhow).

But all of this was just a lot of Leonard Nimoy, In Search of… shit, that is until yesterday. I was waiting for a train in the subway station. Here in Seoul some stations have large televisions between the tracks that play all manner of nonsense, commercials, subway safety messages, and from time to time music videos.

Yesterday I was waiting for my train to arrive when suddenly some fuckin’ Bon Jovi video started playing.

Bear in mind I’m not talking about some “new school” Bon Jovi. This was “Livin’ on a Prayer” Bon Jovi. This was permed mullets and fringe wearing Bon Jovi. This was Jersey’s Finest Bon Jovi. Upon witnessing that video, my theory was proven.