Dancing in the Gangnam Style

Permit me to prove to you why I need a job.

You've heard, I'm sure, of the Korean pop sensation PSY and his rap/dance hit Gangnam Style. I have made a few observations of which I would like to inform you at length.


Let's start with his name.

PSY - dancing enthusiastically to Gangnam Style.

 It seems strange to me that PSY's name is pronounced "si" like  our words pysche, psuedo etc. Assuming that the Korean language does not share the silent P given to us by the Greeks, it's odd that such a quintesstially Korean artist should take his name from an English linguistic trait.

Anyway.

I'm sure that you have heard of Gangnam Style and if you have not I strongly recommend checking it out. It's halfway to a billion views on YouTube, and if you have seen it I'm sure that youalready have your own opinion about it.

And I'm sure you'd imagine that I'd hate it.

Well, you're wrong. I like it very much. I like that it is quite clearly mocking the culture of attempting to look cool. I like that it's not only not taking itself too seriously, but that it's mocking the kind of people who are obsessed with image and looking cool.

Take as a equivalent that I strongly dislike: LMFAO's 'Party Rock Anthem', ostensibly a humorous video that doesn't take itself too seriously. BUT WAIT, notice how important looking cool is in this video and how seriously the dancers are actually taking themselves.

PSY's video appears, to my eyes, to be mocking the kind of people who take themselves very seriously and are obsessed with style and image.

Feel free to disagree with me.

I also found a rather darkly humorous news story in The Guardian in which two Thai gangs manage to pull themselves away from the noble exploits of crime and racketeering for a plunge into the always confrontational: dancing.

I especially like the use of the word "escalates" in the title of the story. To me the word 'escalates' seems to suggest a sort of natural progression (like an escalator), it feels here as if The Guardian is suggesting a fifty-odd bullet shootout is the obvious logical step after an aggressive Gangnam Style dance-off.

It is my own personal opinion that Gangnam Style had nothing to do with the shootout, and that the cause was in fact the ridiculous length and unnecessarily unpronouncability of Thai names. As a couple of examples let's take two members of the current Thailand national football team, striker Napat Thamrongsupakorn and goalkeeper Sinthaweechai Hathairattanakool.

Paradorn was briefly no.9 in the world.

It's almost as they've chosen names to be deliberately obtuse, as if learning their names should be a lifelong challenge within itself. They should take a hint from the Koreans, of whom the names, Kim, Lee and Park account for more than 40% of family names (Park Jae-sang, the person I'm supposed to be talking about, being a ready-made example). 

Bizarre naming traditions also appear to be very popular in Thailand (and not Taiwan, which an erstwhile friend once adamantly claimed was the country of origin of Thai food... I mean, seriously, THAI). The Srichaphan brothers, all of whom were professional tennis players, had the given names: Paradorn, Naratorn and Tanakorn. 

Seriously? Who came up with that...

But anyway, I digress.

I like PSY. I like Gangnam Style. 

And if it comes on and I'm out then I'm going to be dancing to it.

The G Word

What the fuck does this fucking t-shirt even mean?

Hold up now, because the shit is about to hit the proverbial fan. I haven't gone on a proper rant in a while.

And that means I have been recharging. Recharging in preparation for this.

Because this, ladies and gentlemen, is my magnum opus, my eureka moment, my je ne sais fucking quoi.

See, what I did, is I grew up and I went to school. And, get this, I was clever! I liked reading, if you'll believe it. I sat in class and I listened because learning was interesting, and I did my homework because I wasn't a brainless cunt.

But when you're a kid, wearing glasses and actually liking to things entering my brain which weren't just the cacophonous wails of the latest X-Factor fame-slut, that makes you something. It makes you unpopular, it makes you bullied, it makes you the G word.

It makes you a GEEK.

Now, that was fine. I didn't mind being a geek. My friends were geeks. We huddled together in the popularity storm, hiding in our anoraks. But it was OK. We were in it together and it was OK.

From left to right: Cunt, Cunt, Cunt, Cunt, Cunt, Cunt, Cunt, Cunt, Cunt.

But then I grew up. Became an adult. And I was horrified to find about something known as geek fashion, or geek-chic.

To your left you will notice some cunts pretending that they are geeks, sporting the geek-chic.

They can fuck off.

They can fuck right off.

They do not know the pain I suffered, we all (we geeks) suffered. Wearing stupid glasses and sitting attentively in lessons and not going for a smoke being the bike sheds. We suffer for what we are.

They have done none of the suffering. They are cool people who have hijacked what geeks look like to make themselves look cooler.

It's a fucking war out there, man. I'm serious. People get beaten up for looking like a geek (haven't you ever seen the opening scene to any coming-of-age teen comedy ever?).

Weezer - categorised as "geek rock" apparently purely on the basis that Rivers Cuomo wears glasses.

[As a side note here, I always felt that movies are a bit mean to jock characters... I mean, they are always, always portrayed as mindless bullies while the geeks are the nice, sensitive caring ones {of course, we are, so I suppose it's justified} but I just wonder whether jocks watch those kinds of films and are rooting for the geeks, or whether they want them to fail?].

These people stealing the geek image - they've probably never even seen Star Wars, or spent a lunchtime at chess club, or ever genuinely been for an eye test (their pathetic over sized glasses probably not even having real lenses).

Well I implore you, fellow geeks. We cannot let them get away with this.

It's OK for me to call myself a geek. And it's OK for me to call me friends geeks. If you are a geek, you can use the word. But this is OUR WORD. They have no right using the G word.

We are geeks.

Some songs you should be listening to

Because my taste in music is so excellent, I've received literally two demands for insight into my current musical taste. As such I've decided I'm going to post 10 songs that have been my favourites this year.

10. Amsterdam - Guster


 

I heard about this song through a live video of Taking Back Sunday. In it, Adam Lazarra errroneously uses the word band name "Guster" when he means "gusto". He and John have a laugh about it and then they reference this song. So I checked it out, and I really like it. Good story that one.

9. I Am What I Is - Wheatus




Wheatus are a hugely underrated band to me. You remember Teenage Dirtbag and A Little Respect but that's about it. They're still going and I think that they have one of the most distinctive sounds in pop-rock music. This song deserves to have more than 300 odd views on YouTube.

8. Love Always, Leviathan - Icarus The Owl



And now for something a bit different. Icarus The Owl are quite a progressive band with lots of odd time signatures and timing changes. The album is a bit of a challenge to listen to but there are moments of brilliance - like this one. 

7. The Company Dime - The Get Up Kids



The Get Up Kids is always lauded as an originator in the emo genre, so I thought it was time I gave them a chance, to see what all the fuss was about. Something To Write Home About is a very good album, and this is my favourite song from it.

6. Island - The Starting Line



I'm a sucker for a good chorus, and I think this is one of the best on my list.

5. Tangerine - Mansions



Obscure band that I found (as I often do find bands) because Mike Sapone had produced their EP. If Sapone sees something in them, there's a good chance I will too. Mansions are like a poppier Crime In Stereo.

4. Head First In The River - Envy On The Coast



Now we're getting to the business end of proceedings. Envy On The Coast tread along the Icarus The Owl path of doing this a little bit differently, with time signatures and what not. But this is just a really good song.

3. Wired Song - Elyjah



Can't even remember how I found this obscure German band but this song has remained one of my absolute favourites throughout the year. I have no idea what he's singing about, but I'm a fan.
 
2. Ghost Of York - As Tall As Lions



As Tall As Lions are a Long Island band, which automatically makes them better. They've got a couple of good albums, so I wasn't sure which one to put up a preview for on here. For future reference you should also check out "Break Blossom".

1. Alive With The Glory Of Love - Say Anything



Anyone who has talked to me recently will have noticed I am enamoured with Say Anything. They are a band that I wish I had been into when I was a kid. Listening to it is a strange experience. Even though the songs aren't familiar with my teenage years I still feel a lot of nostalgia for those years when I listen. Say Anything are about as emo as they come, and moments of undisputed cheesiness, but their album Is A Real Boy is a genuine masterpiece in the genre. My favourite on the album is 'Belt' but this one is a decent introduction - a love/sex song about the holocaust.

Honourable Mention:

Hotfoot - Sainthood Reps
They See Only Shadows - Gates
Blame - Right Away, Great Captain
The In-Between - Underwater Tiger
Donald Domesky - Prawn
Crawl - Two Tongues
Trippin' The Life Fantastic - Weatherbox
Fire's Highway - Japandroids
Til It's Done To Death - John Nolan
Cover The Roots Lower The Stems - Moving Mountains
Earthquake - Hit The Lights
Gates - The Menzingers
American Hearts - Piebald
Paper Thin Hymn - Anberlin
Firebreather - Daytrader