Dec10
“Gangnam Style”
on December 10, 2012 at 8:35 amFor the record, I’m apparently one of the few dozen people on the planet who hasn’t viewed the video, and it’s not (just) because of this.
It just looks and sounds stupid, from the clips that I’ve seen.
[Update a while later]
Also, for the record, I have never seen Rocky Horror Picture Show. It became a point of pride in college.
I bet you’re the life of the Christmas party.
I’m not the life of any party where loud obnoxious music or rapping is involved. I’m outta there.
I asked my wife about “Gangnam Style” as I saw the name dropped in the comments section of Richard Fernandez’ blog. My wife is pretty “square” and doesn’t dance or at least doesn’t do Hip Hop dance, and she said “Oh, that is that Korean singer” and proceeded to do a couple steps of the “Horse Dance” or whatever they call it.
So Rand, you and I, the absolute last two people on the planet to hear about this.
Oh, I had definitely heard of it. I just haven’t wasted any precious seconds of my waning life watching it.
And yet you took the time to blog about how you haven’t watched it. Watching it would have been faster.
I like your blog, so I’m saying this in a friendly way, but the way you’re proud of being a stick in the mud is odd to me. Just have fun some time. Let loose. It’s just silly, and silly can be a good thing in reasonable quantities.
And yet you took the time to blog about how you haven’t watched it. Watching it would have been faster.
I have no idea how long it is, but that would be true only if it were less than twenty seconds or so. And it would still be twenty seconds that I couldn’t get back, whereas I enjoyed writing the blog post.
I like your blog, so I’m saying this in a friendly way, but the way you’re proud of being a stick in the mud is odd to me. Just have fun some time.
In equally friendly fashion, I missed the part where I said I am “proud of being a stick in the mud.” I have quite a bit of fun all the time. That what’s fun to you is not necessarily what’s fun to me isn’t my problem.
I don’t pride myself on being a stick in the mud. I pride myself on not being particularly susceptible to peer pressure, which is why I don’t give a damn when someone calls me a stick in the mud for not liking much of the crap that passes for modern popular culture.
Someone sent it to me, even twenty seconds was an eternity. I killed it quickly.
But I’m a fan of Rocky Horror. Then again, I’m a huge fan of 50′s scifi flicks and 50′s / 60′s rock and roll movies. Two things that send many people running for the hills.
I guess the video is supposed to look and sound stupid because it is supposed to be a satire about rich people (in South Korea — I guess “Gangnam” is like “Park Avenue”), and everyone knows that rich people look and sound stupid . . .
Technically, it’s about the very, very crass nouveau riche, apparently Gangnam is a chunk of former farmland near Seoul which became some of the most high-priced land in the world outside of Tokyo, circa 1986. The landowners, mostly salt of the earth peasant stock (“You know – morons.”) enjoyed a truly massive windfall profit which they used, apparently, to make Los Angeles Persians look like paragons of Puritanical reserve and taste in comparison.
Personally, I preferred the Pyongyang Style parody.
I must be the next-to-last then. I had to look it up on the Intertubes this weekend to figure out what it was. Not my thing and it’s a dumb sounding word to boot.
I saw part of the original “gangnam style” video only after first seeing a parody video called “Klingon Style”. The parody was better.
Lo Pan Style was a most excellent parody.
The problem is that in order to appreciate a parody, one has to be familiar with the original. I refuse.
It stands on its own fairly well but you would have to have seen Big Trouble in Little China to appreciate it.
I like watching stuff like this because it’s fun to be surprised by people’s creativity. Sometimes it’s a waste of time and sometimes not.
And it can be fun to annoy people by getting a song stuck in their head by uttering a few words like making bacon pancakes.
Maybe I’m just an old fuddy-duddy, but shouldn’t the entertainment for a Christmas celebration be a little, you know, Christmas-y? I have nothing against Psy, or his “music”, it’s not my cup of tea, but the kids seem to like it, but he’s not really the first artist you think of when you think Christmas music. Wasn’t Johnny Mathis available? Didn’t Taylor Swift have a passable Christmas album last year? Is singing at the White House Christmas party another job Americans won’t do?
Even CeeLo Green has a decent Christmas album. He might be too busy with The Voice to sing at a party, though…
Oh, Gangnam Style is silly and fun, and it’s now the most watched video in Youtube history. Hyuna, the redheaded babe in the video, is an absolute doll. She does a version of G. Style as well, plus some other vids such as Bubble Pop (execrable K Pop, but again, she looks like a million dollars), and her recent vid Ice Cream is a hoot, and in it she looks like two million dollars.
Hasn’t the singer just slated the US and all the US stands for? Obviously forgetting history and that he could be in the north korea and not south (there would be no south!).
Aren’t people grateful – sometimes I can understand why isolationism is attractive to some.