Just to get something off my chest first:
Today, I missed church. While I was driving there, I couldn’t remember whether I’d closed the garage door and neither could my sister. I usually would assume that I probably did close it out of habit and even if I didn’t, it wouldn’t matter much. I can’t do that anymore because just last month in my once-secure neighborhood, someone stole tools and maybe engine oil from my often-open garage. I dropped her off and drove back home to check. It was closed and if I headed back to church again, I’d probably wouldn’t be in time for anything except the free lunch. I am not a freeloader (at least, not outside my house) so I stayed home.
Now for my dream:
For some reason, I was in an L-shaped classroom kind of set up. We weren’t in individual desks, just folding chairs at those long foldable tables like you see in school cafeterias. I think it was something church-related. I guess we were doing Bible study, so I guess it was the Bible study leader who said that there were some new people present. I leaned towards my right to see around the corner of the room (the other leg of the L was in front of me to the left) and was surprised to see a “full-timer” from SoCal. Earlier this year in real life, I’d stayed at my friend’s house with her in her room and that guy was staying in her brother’s room next door. In my dream, both of us were very surprised to see each other.
“You guys know each other?”
“Yeah, we met before.”
“Really? Since when?”
I was about to launch into a brief but thorough explanation but took a fatal pause to get ready. He answered while I was mid-pause. Interrupted, really, but it was my fault for pausing…
“We met last [winter].” Did you have to put it that way? “We”? There’s just something wrong with answering for another party in this situation with the word we.
Awkward laughter ensued: “From the way you said that, are you dating?” Yeah, I was wondering about that, too.
“Oh, no, we’re not dating! Not that I wouldn’t but because [bla bla bla] so the situation was really just [bla bla bla].” Facepalm. Where is this going?
“Well, would you?” No. No. No, do not go there. What is happening?
“I don’t know. I guess it depends on her.” WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT?
The entire time, I was starting to feel ill. Feverish, you might say. I felt really scared, my pulse shot past the dugeun/doki stage into the hunted rabbit stage.
The surrounding people who knew me started to tease me and ask what I thought of that and I just felt smaller and smaller. I was red already but I toppled out of the room, feeling like a sick dog. I laid on my side on a bench in the hall leading into the room and someone friendly came over, concerned.
“Hey, are you feeling OK?”
“I’m feeling kind of sick all of sudden.” I tried to explain what had just transpired. “… and now I don’t know why, maybe I felt like they were pressuring me too much, but I not only feel embarrassed, I feel sick as in I could throw up any minute now.”
Trust me, I felt like shit.
When I woke up, I was happy to not feel sick but I was also concerned about not resolving the situation. I knew something was wrong with my reaction but before I could make a solution, I fell out of my subconscious and back into the conscious. I’m still wondering what my dream means. Does it mean that if I ever faced the possibility of a relationship in real life, I shouldn’t say yes to one because I wouldn’t be able to handle it? I think so. (Hahaha, I can’t sing, dance, nor perform on stage but if I ever tried to join a Korean entertainment agency, I could sign the no-dating clause in the contract.)
Plastic Surgery
“If Dolly Parton ruled the world, she would ‘create food without any calories and place a plastic surgeon in every garage [so] everyone could be beautiful.’”
Plastic surgery is a touchy subject. Someone with a normal body (one that doesn’t pose some kind of health risk or disfiguration such as burns or cleft lips) doesn’t need plastic surgery. In Korea, getting plastic surgery and not admitting to it is a big no-no. Meanwhile, looks are a big factor in marketability—since preparing trainees requires a lot of money, the entertainment agencies try to invest in only profitable people, even if it means tweaking visuals.
One of the sad truths of the world that being less attractive is a disability capable of cancelling out being talented. There are certain exceptions but let’s face it, non-looks-related praise makes up only about half of all compliments and “He’s so cute/ she’s so pretty” is a full half. It’s practically considered a virtue to be good looking even though that’s more due to genetics than due to inherent merits. People who get the surgery are criticized for being insecure or something but their critics are the same people who value a person for being prettier than someone else with comparable merits. Seriously, the ranking system goes like this: naturally attractive, plain, plastic.
I think plastic surgery is a very personal decision but beauty shouldn’t be an issue to the point that everyone deserves a plastic surgeon. No one asks to be born ugly or just plain, but for those who are, why fold? Look at JYP. He supposedly has a complex about his face (and let’s face it, some may find him loveable but few will find him attractive) but he’s a CEO of a “big 3″ entertainment agency. Guys don’t have to be as good looking as girls but they get judged, too, especially if they’re singer-dancers. If he can make that career, it’s much more possible for unattractive people to earn other livings. Besides, it’s your God-given body and you should take care of it instead of doing unnecessary things to it.
Even though that’s my stance, I don’t look down on people who do get it if they have their reasons unless they’re addicted. It’s the people who judge by looks who are wrong.
Atheists
Christians: if you’ve tried to argue with a hardcore atheist, you probably know what I’m talking about.
They act like angels of truth, but they fight dirty. They wave their words around like shepherd’s staffs, but they wield them like clubs to break the arms and legs of your arguments. The vital parts are left intact but who can walk on broken legs and who can work with broken arms? Everyone except Christians are blind to the clubbing because that’s the law they know.
You know you’re right. You know that even if you’re not strong in logic, the logic of the Bible you believe in is completely solid. You know that facts are more than science, and that science is more than the words of scientists. There is much to be said for integrating philosophy into education (as much as I hated writing about it in seventh grade) because philosophy teaches logic.
You need logic to really understand math and science for what they are and how they work, and that same logic demonstrates that until someone disproves that there could even vaguely be a God or that the creation of the universe from nothing could be random, being Christian does not make you less intelligent than an atheist.
I know that the atheists are working hard to show that it is possible that life came to exist through random events. It’s incredible how they’ve managed to brew their prebiotic soups, study the unfamiliar systems of the deep sea vents, and conduct their endless experiments on how things may have come to be. These are really smart and dedicated people working to put together this picture.
Unfortunately, that’s not how logic works. Logic works one solid step at a time and there are no spaces for guesswork beyond the assumption that all we touch, see, hear, smell, and taste are not illusions. The steps of logic in the world we know consist of infallible facts in the world we know. Fact: if the world came to be as atheists believe, no one was there to witness and record it because the nature of their theories don’t allow for the existence of humans for much of the world’s history. I would say, “much of the universe’s history,” but the history of the universe is somewhat longer than the history of the world no matter what you believe. Fact: if the Bible is true, even though Adam didn’t happen early enough to witness creation, God exists, God doesn’t lie, and God told someone to write down history as He witnessed it. Feel free to find the results inconclusive. Obviously, what actually happened can’t be proven by the theories of the atheists (just because you can walk from A to C via B doesn’t mean you have to). Equally obviously, either both the Bible is true and God exists or the Bible is false and God does not exist.
Everyone who acknowledges that the Bible is true must also acknowledge that God exists and everyone who does not acknowledge the Bible also does not acknowledge God’s existence. The latter must deal with the infinite alternate possibilities. There is proof that God exists (but I will not elaborate since there are many clearheaded others who not only are perfectly capable of providing evidence but also have done so already) although some evidence is less tangible than others. That aside, since Christians acknowledge the Bible and atheists don’t, they can’t argue with each other. You have to agree on the relevant facts to argue the implications of those facts and come to a resolution so Christian-atheist debates based on “your facts are wrong” can’t resolve.
What do atheists do in this case?
Actually, first: what could atheists do?
They could politely state that they don’t acknowledge the Bible as fact.
What do many atheists actually do? (Id est what did I mean by “they wield them like clubs to break the arms and legs of your arguments”?)
They use derisive analogies from flying spaghetti monsters to “2+2=5″. Quote from one guy on Soompi: “I can think of a trillion different gods [. . .] better than yours.” To get that count, he’d have to include all the gods who require human sacrifices. How pleasant.
What can you do? You can argue until they stop arguing, which could go on for who knows how long depending on whom you’re talking to. You can walk out feeling huffy. Or, you can edit your post, close all loopholes in your logic while being polite about it, and walk away trusting the rest to God.
One Shot: Teen Top Crazy
“Will you be like my girlfriend?”
She panics.
“No.” This is going to get really awkward if I don’t split, pronto.
She starts walking but breaks into a run. He hesitates a moment, and then gives chase.
She gets on a train and he keeps chasing her. Remembering a shortcut to the stop where she might get off, he sprints through a tunnel. She gets on the bus just as he catches up. Without stopping to catch his breath and probably wheezing his lungs out already, he barrels after the bus. Again he nearly catches up and again he gets left behind. (Desperation and adrenaline gets you only so far, kiddo.) Not all is lost, however, as she has taken notice of his desperation.
Her thoughts: “Wow, he’s working really hard. Sigh. Why am I so pretty? I only saw him once and he wants to go out already? I’m going to kill nuna. I knew she wanted to see how I’d look as a girl but did she have to go as far as drugging me, changing my clothes, and sticking me in another part of the metropolis? I woke up not knowing where the heck I was, and then I couldn’t walk two blocks without someone falling in love with me. I guess I owe him an explanation but how could I explain that I can’t be his girlfriend because I’m not a girl? This is so humiliating.”*
Xhe gets off the bus, still deep in thought as he continues charging after hxx. He follows hxx to an apartment building and runs up the stairs only to stop and realize that he doesn’t know where xhe lives.
“Fool.” Apparently, xhe decided to give the poor guy some closure. Changing a few details, xhe tells him, “My friend tricked me into crossdressing so I’m not a girl.”
He’s stunned for a split second, but then he hugs hxx to check.
“Fool.”
He laughs, marveling at the truth and thinking, “I just made an idiot of myself, huh.” Feeling hot from running and from embarrassment at spending all that energy on chasing a beautiful guy, he shakes out his shirt for some nice ventilation. He looks at hxx and then looks away while scratching the back of his neck, still astonished.
He turns to hxx and pulls hxx close. While kissing the top of hxx head, he whispers, “Actually, I’m getting stalked by a batshit crazy girl who didn’t believe my lie that I have a girlfriend. It’s actually good that you’re really a guy, so can you pretend to be my girlfriend anyway?”
They sit down. Xhe laughs. ”Are you kidding me? Well, I guess I have free time for a play date today.”
“Let’s hit the arcade!”
“YEAH!”
“Remember, you can’t act like a man!”
“Oh, right…”
*I do know that SoHyun doesn’t look anything like a guy but once the plot idea popped into my head, there was no getting rid of it.
The Help
★★★☆
Warning: spoilers
The Help is about two black women, Aibileen and Minny, and the time they helped a white woman, Skeeter, write a book about black maids in Jackson, Mississippi. The time frame is somewhere around MLK and JFK with an emphasis on “separate but equal”. Mississippi law bans social interaction between whites and blacks, one way or another, so Skeeter’s interviews aren’t exactly toeing the line. Meanwhile, alpha bitch Hilly adds tension by blacklisting maids she doesn’t like yet staying friends with Skeeter (“friends” as in “With friends like these…”). The Help is easy to like but that is exactly why it is not a great movie.
Before I explain, let us review other parts of the movie.
Skeeter is played by Emma Stone. In The Help, Stone looks like a freckly little boy and that is not a bad thing for the role. Skeeter is the oddball of the Jackson white ladies. As a career-driven person, she’s not worried about marriage, though she does get a lot of pressure between her mom’s different values and Hilly playing matchmaker. The actress didn’t have to be gorgeous, but as one of the main characters, Stone’s Skeeter was utterly tame. Having lots of lines and screentime doesn’t make up for being thin on personality, and using awkward mannerisms (exempli gratia weird laugh) doesn’t help. Fortunately for The Help, the movie isn’t all about Skeeter, anyway.
The design scheme of the costumes is obvious, which I liked. Most of the JWLs have smooth, bouffant-ish hairstyles and wear light, feminine colors. Skeeter has messy curls and donned earthier tints. If Stone’s acting doesn’t cut it, she stands out enough because of these two differences in character design. I think most people won’t actively notice, but it is a concrete way to get the audience to make those associations.
Rule of Chick Flick (well, Chick Lit, I guess) says that all white female leads must have a white male love interest unless the plot calls for otherwise, and The Help complies with this in a bad way. Hilly knows this guy named Stuart who works on an oil rig, and she forces Skeeter to date him. Of course, Skeeter hates him almost before he opens his mouth, both of them commence exchange of adolescent insults, and he returns for a privater second date in which he apologizes, says some cheesy things, and kisses her. The execution of these scenes leave me incredulous. Both of the actors go so awkwardly fast that I wonder why the director didn’t cut the romance out entirely. It’s not like it affected the plot or resulted in any character development at all.
The real, strong point of the movies is Minny. Aibileen isn’t half bad but Minny was my favorite. Octavia Spencer, who plays Minny, shows both the loveably gimmicky sass and the vulnerability of a woman who fears her husband’s temper. The only problem is that there isn’t more of her story. Spencer wears Minny’s emotional state like a badge complete with flashing red strobe light. She seems nonchalant when she socializes with the maids boarding the bus to go to work but tension and determination hangs in the air when the bus leaves without her. Meeting her new employer, a ditzy but friendly blond lady named Celia, Minny’s mood shifts from anxious to stumped to comfortable right on the beat. She trains Celia in all the skills Celia’s supposed to have so the other JWLs don’t show her up, and takes a gruff pride in Celia’s developing skills such as cooking and dressmaking. Hilly hosts a party and Celia shows up with a simple but eye-catching hot pink dress. As the other maids joke about JWLs needing to hold tightly onto wavering husbands, Minny snickers, “That’s the best Miss Hilly could come up with?”* If I were to remake The Help, I’d ask the author for permission to shift focus closer to Minny because her character attracts more attention.
One glaring and unlikable fault of The Help is the hanging resolution. Boom, the book is a hit. Boom, Skeeter and Stuart break up. Boom, Skeeter goes to New York. Boom, Aibileen gets fired. First, Skeeter is leaving not so much because she’s clutching onto her dream of being a writer as because she “burned most of her bridges”*. Aside from Stuart’s transformation from dandy to cowboy, his dumping of Skeeter has no significance besides being just another reason Skeeter doesn’t have to stay. The Help talks a lot during the movie to unconvincingly tell the audience that Skeeter’s headed to Harper but I feel she owes the maids more than the royalties for the book. This is a chick flick and that’s as heartwarming as it gets? She doesn’t even hang around long enough to see Hilly bully Aibileen into getting fired, which leads me to my next point.
The Help has a big, fat feel-good vibe, what with all the pretty colors and neat appearances, but it makes poor sense when I think about it logically. Aibileen’s charge looks on crying as her mother fires Aibileen, whose parting script is purposely reminiscent of a mother giving parting advice to her precious child. I was tempted to think, “Isn’t it sweet how open and affectionate the maids are with the white babies? They care enough to get upset when they observe that white lady being a poor mother. It’s all the more tragic when the white kids grow up to act like their parents.” In real life, the maids probably feel coldly pitiful towards their charges when they’re still innocent. They have to neglect their own kids to take care of these. They have to play a frustratingly ironic part in the education of the white baby as a nursemaid—if the kid thinks of her as “my real mama” now, the kid will still think of her as “the maid who has to do everything mama doesn’t have to” later. The maid-child relationships in The Help are so sweet that they disturb me. That’s not the only thing that doesn’t make sense. Supposedly, there’s a lot of turmoil in Jackson in relation to the Civil Rights movement and the book’s publication. I don’t see any of it. Viola Davis (Aibileen) does a fantastic job of showing the fear that black people had of what white people could do to them and Bryce Dallas Howard (Hilly) is just as good at making sinister threats (at one point, I wondered if she were connected to the KKK), but most of it is implied. There are only a couple hints about domestic violence in Minny’s house and Skeeter’s like Mary Sue to the black people. For a film with dark themes, there’s an awfully apparent lack of darkness. Think about it. Skeeter might be nice to black people, but she doesn’t understand them and she’s very nosy. The film makes sense if the black people in The Help are being friendly on the outside and condescendingly tolerant on the inside due to Skeeter’s naïvete. However, the film’s pushing her as some kind of hero when she’s supposed to be nothing more than an ambitious young woman who wants to write a successful book and happens to be a little more color-blind than her friends. The story and the actual script are in disagreement, which I didn’t notice until after the movie.
Overall, The Help is not a bad movie. I can’t like it because it’s too rosy. I can’t dislike it because even the awkward scenes had entertainment value. One thing’s for sure: I wouldn’t buy it.
*Not quoting word for word, I wasn’t taking notes.
K-pop 2011
I am honestly not a natural music blogger but as a regular Korean pop listener and a blogger, I will do an end-of-the-year summary.
January
Titles: Secret’s “Shy Boy”, CNBLUE’s Jung Yong Hwa’s “For First Time Lovers”, G.NA’s “Black & White”, JYJ’s “Their Rooms”
This year had quite a fresh start with Secret showing everyone how Koreans do retro doo-wop and G.NA making the one of the cutest music videos ever. Goguma couple YongSeo’s Ban Mal Song’s simplicity was an instant hit. Finally, Their Rooms was amazing and a nice reset button after that Kanye… thing.
Choosing a favorite is difficult. Shy Boy was hands down the most successful of all the songs in this set, but Nine (Their Rooms) gave me wonderful chills. From Black & White, the duet with Wheesung was my favorite (but keep in mind that I didn’t hear everything). NINE, I choose you! (haha.) Nine is not a good pop song because it’s not upbeat and get-up-and-moving like pop should be, but it was the most touching.
February
Titles: LA.G’s “Don’t Delude Yourself”, Dream High OST, IU’s “Real+”, J-Cera’s “Endless Love”
February was weird. I was probably still listening to January songs when I wasn’t watching Dream High. My friend sent me LA.G’s “Don’t Delude Yourself”, a two-song single in which the title song is based (somewhat) on Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. LA.G has since been not much of a success, and I didn’t listen to Real+ until the fall.
I love IU and that even started with Dream High, but I’d have to choose LA.G’s “Wavering” (when I wasn’t drooling over Kim Soo Hyun). If I weren’t so lazy, I would seriously make an orchestra arrangement for the high school orchestra. I wasn’t actually in that orchestra but a full symphony arrangement is for overachievers and I just know I wouldn’t do that to myself. ”Wavering” is very snappy. Unfortunately for LA.G, it wasn’t very popular (I deduce) but it shows off the potential of their instrumentals, which is their selling point. Remind me to make that arrangement later: I need to stop being lazy.
March
Titles: Leader’s's* “Please”, CNBLUE’s “First Step”
Leader’s had a nice debut single but the material was honestly too typical. First Step had too many Korean versions of their Japanglican songs. My favorite from this set is Imagine (First Step) but even it could have been improved with more Jong Hyun and less rapping. One thing to be said for the rapping, though, is that it doesn’t kill the mood with a poor choice of style.
*That is not a mistake. The proper noun is Leader’s and then there’s a possessive after that.
April
Titles: Super Junior KRY’s “Fly”, Apink’s “Seven Springs of Apink”, David Oh’s “No. 1″, 2AM’s “saiai”, Lee Hyori’s “Please Don’t Leave”, CNBLUE’s “Thank You”
This month has a long list and I probably didn’t need to include everything, like Fly, No. 1, and Please Don’t Leave. I wanted to keep these three singles anyway. I don’t want to complain too much about Super Junior, but let’s just say I support SJKRY as opposed to SJ and that it’s nothing personal. David Oh’s take on one of my favorite BoA songs had to be included as well, just because. His voice is nothing special but he’s creative and handles his simple voice very well because of that, and that’s why excluding No. 1 was never an option. Finally, I confess to pouncing on Please Don’t Leave to have a Hyori song that didn’t come with an embarrassing concept.
Try Again Smile Again (Thank You) is the song of April because it has a positive glow to the sound that saw me through the end of the year. It is simply a beautiful Korean pop-rock song.
May
Titles: 2NE1′s “Lonely”, Yuna Kim-Lena Park-Yoon Jong Shin’s “Winter Dream”
I thought I liked Lonely, and then I met her sister Reggae Lonely, who doesn’t count because she’s not on the market. I also like Winter Dream despite its non-wintry reggae-ness. How wintry a song can you publish in mid-May? Honestly. Well, the actual weather was pretty cold, at least in this corner of the world. Anyway, the song of May was Winter Dream.
June
Titles: Secret’s “Starlight Moonlight”, IU-Yuna Kim’s “Ice Flower”
Four cute songs in June: I was really pleased. Oh Honey (Starlight Moonlight) was my favorite with the Starlight Moonlight and Ice Flower in close second and Melodrama (SM) in third. I have a really stupid reason for liking Oh Honey. Don’t laugh. I sing, “Oh Honey!” to my dogs every time I see them. If there ever were a sign of awesomeness in a song, it was that the song could serve practical purposes and don’t argue the practicality of baby-talking to dogs because it’s a real skill.
July
Titles: Lee Hyori’s “Remember”, 2NE1′s 2nd mini album
Who am I kidding? Ugly (21) is made of so much win in terms of choral melody, message, etc. that no matter how gently Hyori sings her ballads, Ugly wins every time.
I don’t have any songs for August or September.
October
Titles: Girls’ Generation’s “The Boys”, Secret’s “Moving in Secret”
Between albums, MiS could trounce TB any day with both hands tied. However, Lazy Girl (TB) has the edge over Neverland (MiS) because it’s catchy. Neverland’s the prettier song but Lazy Girl nails pretty, cute, and catchy in a single package. That’s actually a good summation of the difference between the groups. Secret tends to try to specialize and reinforce, which is the best approach for a pretty new four-member group when faced with nine-member Girls’ Generation, who’s hefty enough to spread out and cover more bases. For albums, Secret’s the studio album and Girls’ Generation’s the hits compilation, and that’s just how it pans out.
November
Titles: The BOSS’s “Lady”, Wonder Girls’s “Wonder World”, IU’s “Last Fantasy”
IU came a little late so I’m only familiar with You & I. So. How do Lady and Nu Shoes (Wonder World) compare? Drumroll, please.… Lady trumps Nu Shoes. I can’t really say why. Frankly, Lady’s boring and the only thing any good about it is its singers. Perhaps it’s that the song is nothing fancy and The BOSS just executed it as it is and as it should be.
December
Titles: Trouble Maker’s “Trouble Maker”
The only song from this set that could possibly end the year on the right note is Time. Time is easily the prettiest song on the album with no awkwardly trashy music video to taint it. It’s also very appropriate because December is the end book-end of the year. It’s when people start looking back and reflecting in preparation for the next year.
K-POP SONG OF THE YEAR:
… TO BE ANNOUNCED.
HA. HA. HA.
Poor horse
http://iwastesomuchtime.com/on/?i=14866
This time, my friend asked me to talk about this. Honestly, I prefer to pick my own topics but since she’s very loyal, I must make an exception. Huhu.
To whomever wrote this:
Congratulations. You’re a hard worker and a brilliant student who can pull a “3.8 GPA” while working “30+ hours a week”. You’re also a college senior. For UCs, Fall 2008 tuition was 73 percent of Fall 2010 tuition. I’m guessing if you were a freshman, a sophomore, or even a junior, you wouldn’t be able to cover your school fees through senior year even by working as much as you have.
Working a minimum wage job and getting by in a small apartment doesn’t require a degree if you’re satisfied with that life, in which case there wouldn’t much point to that education. You could have saved even more money by not going to school at all. If more citizens didn’t take white-collar careers for granted and worked blue-collar jobs, there’d be less job openings for illegal immigrants—if the bosses would agree to stop taking advantage of cheap, illegal labor. That’s not to say that college isn’t bad—more like it should be restricted to people who know what they want to do with a degree.
If people didn’t feel compelled to attend institutions of higher learning, universities would need better incentives to beef up their attendance: incentives such as lower fees. We wouldn’t want to harm our centers of learning for intellectual adults. On the other hand, becoming intelligent, critically thinking adults is already a pretty big incenti-oh, wait. 
Lowering fees is probably a better idea.
Before you start implying that Occupy people are lazy whiners, remember that some of them are also hard workers. Yes, there are a lot of lazy people who should realize that someone’s got to roll up their sleeves and do the so-called menial work. However, there are people who already have their share of bad luck without the economy’s effects factoring in. Not everyone can work your hours and pull your grades. I’ve heard of a girl who studies much more than I do, but still gets scores only slightly above average. Sometimes, people who work harder and technically make more money actually make less due to income taxes, courtesy of whoever makes the policy and whatever economic events affect that decision. Time was your family could tighten their belts a bit and pinch their pockets a little and you had the money you needed to go to a college you expressly wanted to attend. Now, you and your parents take out separate loans and still can’t cover tuition—never mind all those other required fees that get tacked on—plus you apply around for any school that will take you because society expects you to get a university degree. People who want to attend UCs do have the option of taking two years in a community college but since it’s an increasingly popular option, the issue becomes competing for spots in transferable classes. The situation may be “not that bad” but it definitely doesn’t encourage optimism either.
Your perspective is your perspective. Remember that there are a lot of people in this boat.
Trouble Maker (JS&HyunA) – TROUBLE MAKER
♫♫
- Trouble Maker
Do not watch the music video. Do not watch the music video. Did I mention that you should not watch the music video? Oh, and don’t watch the performances. The audio by itself is a pretty good pop track, which is why I strongly recommend abstaining from contaminating your eyes with the trashy visuals. Actually, the debut performance, which was bad already (it was more “HyunA dear, what are you doing?” than slutty), was not as bad as the music video, and I don’t understand how either is relevant to the song.
The song’s style is slightly upscale and spoiled, like it’s from the fashionable part of town. The melody’s nothing special but catchy, and the whistle brings an element of old school suavity to the typical glamour theme. HyunA and Jay Stomp (ha!) sell it well and their voices complement each other. She might still sound whatever when on stage, but her studio voice sounds better. I think.
Trouble Maker sounds like rich people acting indifferent. The girl knows she’s sexy but she doesn’t roll with just anybody. She likes the attention, but she’s too rich to be easy. Meanwhile, the rich, debonair guy approaches her confidently no matter how she brushes him off. - 듣기 싫은 말 [Speech that I hate hearing]
Koreans really like their Latin influences, as evidenced by the romantic guitar picking in this ballad. Again, the melody is nice though typical, with a touch of something else in the instrumentals. Personally, I’d like to strip off the percussion and bring the guitar further out, but it’s really a matter of what they were going for.
This song is all Korean drama. Obviously, it’s about a relationship not working out for some reason or another. Maybe nobody’s dying, maybe the honeymoon stage ended badly, but it’s still the same thing. These songs are a little too easy to file away. Well, they’re pretty and THERE’S NO RAP. - Time (featuring 라도)
I’m going to call this a 바래 type of song. It’s on the sadder side of the barae ballads scale but it has that unmistakable quality of reflecting on the past and looking towards the future. It’s all in the rolling percussion and the chord progression. Also, both singers sound great on this track. So many variations of this type of song have been made, and they all sound more or less the same, but you know it’s your guilty pleasure. You know it. - 아무렇지 않니 [Don't you mind?] (JS solo)
Koreans can be so rote; Don’t You Mind’s a pleasant R&B ballad track like all the others. Yep. That’s really all there is to it. Isn’t it boring? It’s not bad because the whole thing is tried and true. The style, the instrumentals, the singing, everything is good but everything is also a rehashing of every other R&B ballad that ever existed. It’s true that most songs in a genre will sound similar, and that’s even truer when the songs are written by a certain set of songwriters, but is it so difficult to reject songs that aren’t strikingly interesting?
Overall, it’s not too shabby despite the stupid fanservice-y promotions, but I am expecting better.
Dream 2
I honestly can’t recall 100 percent of my dream (can anyone?) but I will relate some of the stranger and possibly more amusing episodes.
I think my family and I were camping out in maybe a cabin or renting out a mini house with some friends in a camp-y sort of area. You know, with the big trees and stuff. I don’t know why we were there but for some reason this chinese guy who went to my junior and senior high school and whose family goes to our church had to stay with our family. Obviously, this would never happen in real life.
We all slept in one room, but it was a really big room. I think I slept on the floor, while he was sandwiched somewhere among the other members of my family.
Our relationship in real life could be described best as “cordial but aloof”. It wasn’t any different in my dream. So while we were staying there, if something stupid or ironic happened like my little sister being a drama queen, we’d just sort of trade eye contact like “You see this?” “Yeah, I get what you mean,” but other than that, we didn’t really talk.
I had to go take a shower in the middle of the night. There was one house that had the bathrooms and showers, and it was pretty nice. There was a home-y lobby and the bathrooms and showers worked like home bathrooms. You just had to pack all your stuff and lock yourself in, and it was pretty secure. I guess I took my shower so late because we were taking shifts and I was a little late in the the line. I had changed halfway when I realized I forgot something.
I changed back and took off, running into one of my old classmates since junior high, a white guy I didn’t know very well. I think he was on his way out from using the guys’ shower and he held the door for me (I do remember he was one of those odd, chivalrous guys). I stopped to say hi-fancy-meeting-you-here-how-have-you-been-O.K.-bye and went back to the room to get my stuff.
This time, I was really almost into the shower when I realized I’d forgotten something else, and I think it was just in the lobby thing. I decided to just wrap myself in towels, be really fast, and risk it. As soon as I was in the lobby, I ran into a different chinese guy from my high school. I was a little freaked out but thanks to my towel skills, I was… ahem… covered. This guy was pretty friendly and did the whole whoa-I-didn’t-know-you-were-here and how’ve-you-been thing. He was also, bless him, remarkably oblivious of the fact that I was trying to make myself small and inching away, dressed in nothing but towels.
I said, “Well, it’s nice seeing you but is it O.K. if I don’t talk to you right now?”
“Oh, sorry, were you busy?”
Slightly exasperated: “I just came out here from my shower to get something I forgot.… so I’m kind of not wearing anything right now, do you mind…?”
Realization dawns: “OH. Uhhh I’ll just go, then. Talk to you later.”
We both beat a hasty retreat and I finally finished my shower.
I don’t remember if there were any other people from my old school days, but I do remember thinking, “Why are there so many people from my high school here? WHY?”
