Time for another Open the Whoopass on a Movie video. Yay! This time, I’m talking about why Man of Steel was a terrible sack of crap. I was harsh on Iron Man 3, but…whooooaaaa. Man of Steel was a lot lot lot lot worse. If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t watch it. If you get frustrated by the illogical actions of idiots for the sake of plot pushing, don’t watch this movie. Watch Star Trek: Into Darkness. If you’ve seen it, and want to spend your money on Man of Crap, spend your money on a ticket for Star Trek again. Watching that movie twice is better than watching Man of Steel once.
One of the points I forgot to mention in the video is this: yes, I know you might be confused and wondering what channel you’re watching. Who am I, and why am I on the eatyourkimchi channel? Eatyourkimchi is mostly Simon and Martina. Simon wears glasses. You don’t have glasses, weird angry guy, so WHO ARE YOU?!?! Sure, that’s part of the Superman mythology, that he puts on glasses and people can’t recognize him, but COME ON! Laurence Fishbird saw this white dude flying in the air in blue spandex. I think he’d remember if someone looked like him in the future! BARGH!
Another point: at the end of the movie the city sure does look fine and dandy, rather than a city that was nearly DESTROYED UTTERLY INTO DUST. You know how much money it would cost to repair that all? Who’s paying the bill? Lex Luthor?
Ah. I don’t know. It’s like they started writing the screenplay for the movie thinking “I want to see Superman fight other Supermen,” wrote in those parts, and then came up with drivel to fill in the rest of the movie. The villains were stupid. Superman was kinda stupid. The plot was stupid. The climax was stupid. All of it, just a really, really bad film.
Maybe you’re DC biased, and Superman is one of your favorite characters ever, so you feel you have to watch it. First of all, where are you?! I haven’t met a single person who likes Superman. The idea of him is cool, but I’ve never met anyone into reading Superman comics and being like “yeah, Superman rocks!” I read “Kingdom Come” and Superman sucked. If anyone can recommend a Superman comic line worth reading, please share. I need to try to find something good about him.
To begin with, Martina got sick on Friday and we were hoping she would get better but she got worse and lost her voice on Sunday. Her voice is still gone today so we couldn’t film Kpop Music Monday and we’re trying to not push it so she can heal up and film a TL;DR and WANK this week. SUPER LUCKILY we happened to film this before the weekend with the intention of posting it up at the end of the week, but now it will take place of Music Monday. Hey, it’s still technically a Kpop Music Monday right? Right!
Half of the year is done, and a whole boatload of songs came out. We reviewed a bunch of them, but there are also loads of songs that we didn’t get the chance to talk about and express our love for. And so, here is a list of the best Kpop songs of 2013 thus far, in no particular order.
Heo Young Saeng “The Art of Seduction”
Simon likes but doesn’t love this song, while I LOVE LOVE this song. It has a peppy disco funk feel with the slap bass in the background but it also has rocking synth and an awesomely catchy chorus that makes you want to sing along. This would be an awesome track for the introduction of an 80s TV show with sassy characters all working as undercover detectives but with multiple talents. Think GEM the cartoon show made into a live action. Oh yeah. Also, you might have noticed I enjoyed changing the “Oppa neun eottae” (how is this Oppa) to “I’m burning up yaaa”.
MBLAQ “Smoky Girl”
Probably both our favourite song of the year. It’s really, really, really good. Start to finish, there’s nothing bad in this song at all. The one small complaint, which is debatable: the chorus is a bit too repetitive, but it also kinda works in the song’s favour as well. Everything else in the song is ridiculously great. Even the rap sequence fit in nicely! It doesn’t even sound like a Kpop song, you know? It’s hard to explain why that is, but the song sounds like it can be played anywhere in the world. It’s definitely one of those songs that we’d be happy to share with our friends that aren’t into Kpop. But legitimate question: what does smoky girl even mean? She’s stinky? Difficult to see? Has smokey eyeshadow? Are they trying to say she’s mysterious? I don’t know. Just SMOKY GURL SMOKY GURL SMOKY GURL SMOKY GUUURRRLLL
It’s the biggest Kpop video of the year, with hundreds of millions of views. No other video this year has been watched as much. It’s almost the most viewed YOUTUBE video of the year as well, isn’t it? If not, it’s definitely high up there. Though, yes, it’s not as popular as “Gangnam Style,” we actually like this song more. But we’re not sure if it’s because we just heard Gangnam Style too much. Question: remember when dances were fun and easy to imitate in Kpop? Like Super Junior’s “Sorry Sorry”? Why did that stop happening? There aren’t really any fun dances to do lately, in my opinion, but PSY’s “Gangnam Style” and “Gentleman” are easy to do, and catchy. We also feel disappointed that so many people write off PSY as a one hit wonder when he’s been producing tons of amazing songs way before Gangnam Style! If you’re new to PSY check out “Champion” (awesome video) “Right Now” (also awesome), “Shake It”, and “It’s Art”. In my opinion, PSY is now dealing with what I have dubbed “jelly hater syndrome”, which is once you’re popular, people automatically want to hate anything you do, thus “Gentleman” being dubbed as “not as good as Gangnam Style” or “a copy of Gangnam Style”. Check out “Right Now: and you’ll see PSY has always been making videos like this. And why does it have to be compared to “Gangnam Style”, it can stand alone as its own song, and it’s certainly better than most of the songs that came out this year.
Wonder Boyz “Tarzan”
Coming right after PSY, which is the most viewed Kpop video of the year, second most viewed Kpop video EVER, this song barely has any views in comparison. It’s still a really awesome song, though. It’s totally fresh and original, which – let’s be honest – isn’t a quality that you hear in a lot of Kpop songs out there. How many bands have done reggaeton, and done it well? And to be a rookie group with a song like this is really ballsy, and gets a lot of respect from us. Really, we were totally amazed by B.A.P.’s debut in January 2012 last year, and we can say that Wonder Boyz’s “Tarzan” is easily the best rookie song of this year for us so far.
I have no idea why Martina doesn’t like this song. She hates this song and hates 4Minute’s “What’s Your Name.” Yes, both songs are a bit clunky and not really smooth, but they’re ridiculously fun. RING GA RING GA RING GA RING! And the dance is silly and easy. What’s wrong with that? I like it. Martina here. Hey, I like the chorus of this song, I think it’s awesome but everything surrounding the chorus was unpleasant for me. I don’t like girls rapping to begin with unless they’re ACTUALLY GOOD AT RAPPING and a lot of this song has clunky rap-speaking that made me want to poke out my ears. But hey, that chorus was indeed fun and catchy and I do enjoy dancing the boob shake dance too.
2PM “ADTOY”
Remember everyone, A.D.T.O.Y = A Donkey Tickles Onew’s Yoohoo. That’s what this song is about.
Martina here. No, but really: this song is muuuuuch better than “Come Back After You Listen to This Song Right Here Right Afterwards Ok Don’t Delay Because It’ll Be Bad And I Totally Ordered Pizza And It Will Get Cold If You Take Your Time Returing After You Have Listened To This Entire Four Minute Song But Right After You Finish Listening And Maybe Peed And Brushed Your Teeth Then Comeback Right Away,” though that song was okay! A.D.T.O.Y was a lot sexier and coherent, in my opinion. The heavy breathing background voices are amazing and the quick rapping with the heavy emphasis on the ending of syllables was awesome sounding in contrast to the clean ballad singing. I even liked the weird robotic sounding background singing over the chorus. All in all I just loved the frantic pace of this song. The guys sounded really horny stressed out and it matched the topic of the very adult song perfectly. And how about the falsetto part? MAN! AWESOME AWESOME!!! Though, yes, it had a rather silly dance which kind of ruined the sexiness of the song and lyrics so I pretend the video didn’t exist and I just imagine a scene from True Blood with Eric wanting to be with Sookie instead.
Martina likes this song a lot more than I do. It’s one of those songs I can appreciate, like “yeah, I can see that this is a good song,” but it’s not something I want to listen to in my spare time but I’ll still hear it from time to time and be like “damn. I forgot how nice of a song this is.” I also think people seem to forget that Lee Hi is a rookie. It’s like their logic is instead, “Well Lee Hi is under YG so she doesn’t get rookie status” which isn’t fair at all. Rookie means first time in the crazy musical field, dealing with all the stress and issues that come with it, and yes, Lee Hi has incredibly grown up sounding vocals but that doesn’t mean she’s exempt from being a rookie. Perfect rookie example, Lee Hi is a dreadful actress, but I dare say it has improved a lot more with the music video for “Rose”.
4Minute “What’s Your Name”
Ok, we couldn’t be more opposed than we are here. I actually really like the song and find it mindless fun, perfect for zombies. It’s silly, it’s colorful, and it’s catchy. Martina just flat out doesn’t like it. Yes, the chorus sounds like WASH YOUR NAY WASH WASH YOUR NAY. That’s not getting in the way of me liking it, though. Martina here. Okay, I loved “I My Me Mine”, “Huh”, “Hot Issue”, “Muzik” and “Volume Up” but WHOA is this song ever SUCKY. Just when I thought they were sticking with the whole chipper LA LA LA LA LA LA LA feel of the song it ends up coming back at the end. Nothing changes in this song!!! It’s so boring and 4minute aren’t usually boring. GARHHH…
Alright, so that’s our list of songs so far. Martina wanted to include UKISS “Standing Still” and Jaejoong’s “Mine” but the list was already getting long however, we did do a Music Monday’s on both of those videos so you can check those out if you haven’t seen them yet! Let us know what your favourite songs of the year are so far and what songs you agree and disagree with us on. Six more months to go!
I wound up reading in one of our TL;DR questions what we think about Kpop idol culture, specifically to do with what Lee Hyori said. Supposedly, she didn’t want to promote her song for more than two weeks, because the stages of shows are mostly for idols and fan culture, rather than for music, or something like that. The point of me raising this question is because we’re not sure what to really do when it comes to Nell. They’re not Kpop, but they’re really big. It was the same for Busker Busker. Unfortunately, “Kpop” has become synonymous with idols and fans, so much so that people barely even consider Psy a part of Kpop, though he’s the biggest thing to ever happen to Korean music, which is some thing that Kpop fans have a hard time accepting. Where is there room in Kpop for people that don’t follow the idol path? It’s not necessarily Indie. We just don’t have a better term for it.
It doesn’t really matter too much, really, because they’ll still be great with or without the label. Nell’s still very popular, moreso than lots of Kpop bands out there, and they keep on making great songs. We don’t like this as much as last year’s “The Day Before,” but it’s still a good song. Check it out and let us know what you think!
Smells featuring Neon Bunny “Listen to Your Heart”
OMG Y U SO NEON BUNNY BIAS? Yes, we totally broke the rules for this song. There’s no video. I’m sorry, other Korean Indie Bands whose songs we didn’t talk about because you didn’t have a video! We’re trying to pressure you into making more videos, so people can see them, and we really cheated on our rule. That’s only because we have a crush on Neon Bunny. It was one of the best things we heard all of last year, and so now we’re anxious for anything else Neon Bunny related. This isn’t a full video. It’s not even Neon Bunny’s best song. But it’s still good! We’re not too familiar with Smells, though, but they do seem familiar. I just Googled to see if we spoke about Smells before, and typed in “eatyourkimchi smells” as the search term. I quickly closed the window. I didn’t want to see what I didn’t want to see…
Coreyah “Whale of a Time”
Is it unfair of us to compare this song to the Decemberists? Not everything ship and whale related must be theirs? It’s also not really fair that this song kinda sounds Decemberists-y. Just without the middle English. Though Decemberists aren’t really Middle English. More…Pre-Victorian? Is that right? I don’t know. I haven’t taken an English lit course in a long time.
But it seems that we’re not being unfair, because even Leigh saw the video and suggested the Decemberists on her own. See! It’s not just us!
Or, if you don’t listen to the Decemberists much, I’m sure you probably have no clue what we’re talking about…so don’t worry! Just check out the song and hopefully you’ll like it.
Anyhow, we’re gonna get back to enjoying our anniversary! We’ve been married for six years as of today! Ok, back to husband and wifely things. See you tomorrow!
Yes, I like to make up silly names for bands. Even though this is Henry’s song, it’s still heavily featuring Kyuhyun and Taemin, so I tried to make a name of all three
Henry + Kyuhyun + TaeMan = Kyu-tae Ry = Cutery.
-This name is ok, but not as good as the next name:
Henry + Kyuhyun + TaeMan = Human Hen
The Human Hen! Sounds like a Marvel Superhero from the 60s.
Spiderman sidekick: “Watch out Spidey! The Human Hen is about to attack.”
*Human Hen throws eggs at Spiderman*
Human Hen: “Buahaha! This battle will be…OVER EASY!”
I mean, umm. I like Henry’s song. That’s what I should be talking about…
Sistar’s back with another great song. They’re consistently awesome. And, could it just be me, or does Sistar look like the most “adult” out of all the girl bands out there? It’s hard to explain, but Sistar seem more mature than other groups. It’s hard to put my finger on. It could be the way that they dress or dance. They just seem more…womanly. Not that the other bands don’t have women in them. They obviously do. There’s just a maturity to Sistar, while other bands have different images that they’re going for. I can’t quite pinpoint it.
Anyhow, I’ll stop fumbling with words and ideas here. I’m just happy they’re out with another awesome song. It’s not their best song ever, but it’s still cool. Check it out if you haven’t seen it yet :D
T-ara, The Seeya, 5Dolls & Speed “Painkiller” – Vote for it Here!
I feel like this song should sound like one of those cheesy christmas specials where you get two sentences from every member of seven different bands and it forms some OOO AHHHHH song chorus that involves people smiling and holding arms, yet, this song sounds nothing like that. Totally surprised! It is actually a serious song and one that sounds pretty good too. It’s not my most favourite song since this is a ballad and ballads tend to not really move me (unless it’s very special) but it still sounds really nice! The video though, attempts to be kind of artsy and while I appreciate that, it pushed the obvious symbolism category via the “painkillers” and the literal turning back of time, yet it still left the plot unclear. I saw a whole bunch of people in the comment section trying to explain it to one another and each person had a guess different then the next. The fact is, the director of any music video will have a concept or plot, which will convert into a script for the actors/actresses to work with, but it comes down to how they capture his/her ideas. I’m not saying I need a super clear plot, but there are ways to film and hint what you’re getting at, for example Nell’s “The Day Before” wasn’t crystal clear at first but as the video went on, you began to understood that this was two different time periods and that his friend in the video with him had committed suicide. What was unclear about the video was if they were lovers or just friends or family, but those are the kind of details that are okay to be vague about. In this video, I think it’s okay that we aren’t sure what kind of breakup she is dealing with, but the rest of the video’s motives were still really unclear. It’s too bad, I think it had the potential to be a super moving video.
Wahoo! We just finished another LiveChat this Friday night, right before we’re about to head out for the night. Totally pumped for the rest of the night. We’re actually tempted to film something now as well. We were thinking about filming a summer night in Hongdae as well. You know, we filmed our video about nightlife in Hongdae a while ago, but that’s when it was cold. It’s warm now! Things are different! People are out and about. The Free Park is transformed. I don’t know. We’ll see if we’re up for filming tonight.
Before we carry on, we’d like to say thanks to all the awesome Nasties who sent us lovely things, including:
Lisa from New York again! Replaced the Girl Scout cookies
Camila and Lucas from Brazil
Gaze and Teru from Ireland
Carmen and Manuela fromSwitzerland
Mauma, Baro, Ayli, Rja, Nana, Alena, Vivienne, Lisa, Laura, and Nabila from Germany
Whoa: those girlscout cookies are delicious. We shouldn’t be eating them all, and we won’t. We’re gonna share them with our friends, because that’s what nice people should do! Except our friends are starting diets now as well. Hmm. Maybe they won’t be able to resist the temptation?
Also, we mentioned in our LiveChat that we’re going to be traveling to Europe soon, to four different countries. We’re not saying which ones yet, because it’s not all set in stone. We’re close to getting it all settled. We gave pictures of our passports so that tickets can be bought, so it looks like it’s gonna happen! Thing is, we don’t want to say where yet, because a while ago, we said we’d be going to Malaysia, and made a video for it, but then that fell through and we never went. That totally sucked. So, this time, we’re not making announcements until the tickets are in our hands, you know? Just know that we’re close to finalizing everything. Yay!
On another note, we’re giving away a copy of Batoost’s “Fiction and Fact” CD. Why? Because you guise give us so much stuff and we feel like we want to give back. So, thank you all for hanging out with us and watching us goof around during our livechats, as we tell stories about how Martina slaps me in her sleep. Marriage…six years…this is what happens to you! Ha. No, that’s not true. Marriage is lovely.
Anyhow, if you want to win the CD, head on over to our review of Fiction and show Batoost your support in the comment section there. They’re coming back in July, supposedly. We’re stoked, and hopefully you are, too. We’ll announce the winners for next week’s LiveChat. Yay!
Ok, so this is a bit different than our other FAPFAPS. This isn’t really fully Korean food, or even a cute Korean spot. It’s just something we were inspired to do when we were in Singapore. Namely, we were surprised to see different kinds of food at the Starbucks in Singapore. Much different than what we have in Korea, which is also much different than what we have in Canada (Oh Ginger Molasses cookies how I miss you!). We also remember when we were in Japan they had some different stuff at McDonalds. So, we figured, maybe some of you are interested in what Korea has to offer. Maybe? I don’t know.
Another thing that really fascinates us is going to supermarkets in other countries. Seeing all the different name brands, some of which are extremely popular and all over the store yet whose names we are totally unfamiliar with. That’s really fun to see, in our opinions. I remember being in Poland a long time ago and seeing a chocolate brand that’s as popular as Nestle in North America, yet I never heard of that brand, and it really intrigued me how some people have giant companies that are parts of their everyday lives, yet those brands are meaningless elsewhere. Then that made me think of fame and relevance, how some people are mega stars in one country yet are utterly nameless in another.
Sorry…I’m getting too deep and philosophical here. Here’s some gortdamned Korean Fast food. It’s different and special. My advice: stay away from any fast food that has Bulgogi in it. Not…that…good. We like Bulgogi otherwise, but this…this is some weird bastardization. I think fast food bulgogi just translates to “meat with sweet sauce.”
Also, we got to play with the magic stick again. YAY! MAAAAGIIIIC STIIIICK. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, we got it in our Last Day in Singapore and have loved it ever since. We put our iPhones on it and can walk around with it and get decent footage. Small problem, though: our audio kind of malfunctioned today (BARGH!) so our mics were useless after all. Totally sucks! So, that’s why we cut out the Starbucks footage and left it in the blooper reel, because the audio there is totally different and noticeably worse, but you still get to see something different. More importantly, you get to see turtle sex. AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH. FYI, if you don’t know what I’m referring to by Turtle sex, Google a video of it. It’s hilarious.
Anyhow, if there’s anything from your country that you notice is different, please share, because these kinds of things fascinate us to no end, because we’re nerds who are very easily amused…
So, a while ago, back in November or so, we filmed a shoot with Channel Ten in Australia, which – from what we’ve been told – is one of the biggest networks in Australia, if not THE biggest. Cool! They were shooting a documentary style video on Kpop and Korea, and they asked us to be on the show and give our input. You can see our section of the video starting at the 5:00 mark or so.
Gotta say, it was really weird when that show aired, because so many people were sending us pictures of their TVs, and tweets were rolling in of people excited to see us. It was really cool! We couldn’t actually see ourselves on TV, but we could see people’s TV’s at least:
Great thing about this also was that some of our closest friends from Korea are now living in Australia, and they just happened to be watching the TV when we came on, and they had a freakout and messaged us, and we were reminded about how much we miss them. THANKS CHANNEL TEN FOR MAKING US SAD! Ha, no, that’s silly. We were really happy to hear from them :D
Anyhow, this video was shot back in November, and it just aired this past Monday. Yay! Someone was nice enough to put it on YouTube, but we weren’t sure if it was going to be taken down instantly, seeing how it’s not an official upload, but it’s still up so I think it’s safe to say that it slipped under their radar? I’m not sure! Hopefully it won’t get taken down. If it does get taken down, you can watch it here on the official channel, though it seems like it’s region blocked. We can’t see it in Korea, and we’re not savvy enough with VPNs to be able to figure it out.
Back to the video itself, it was really well done! We’re total geeks for editing, so the way they used text effects in the video was super cool, with the waving moving away our text and whatnot. The timing was really quite perfect, because we were waving to a Nasty passing by, and the text at the time was of people viewing our blog, so, to us, we had a good laugh.
There’s a lot that got cut out of our section. We went to Times Square for an Epik High fansigning, which is where you see that quick shot of us posing with a fan for a picture. They didn’t include much of what we said for the fansigning event. Understandable. They shoot a ton of footage and then try to cram it all into a 22 minute video. We shot with them for, like, six hours.
Anyhow, let us know what you think! And, on a related media side note, we were also talked about in the Wall Street Journal recently. Double shazaam! It’s a video talking about the Singapore event. Jasper, who ran the whole Music Matters event, was a super awesome guy and just lovely to work with; he talks about developing a following on YouTube and YouTube stardom and whatnot. Odd to hear us talked about in the same sentence. Point is, he talked about the Airport incident at Singapore and how many awesome Nasties were there. Yay! Thanks to all you awesome Singaporean Nasties for helping us make the news!
