The Summer of Idols Finale: A Visit To SMTown

On Friday, September 3, 2010, with Kanon Fukuda’s words of challenge still stinging the cheeks of butthurt SNSD fans, I tweeted one of my thoughts out loud:

I want to bring a giant S/mileage posterboard to the SMTown concert just to troll everyone.

What I was not expecting, was the sudden chorus of replies going “DO ITTTTTTT” “LOOOOOOL” “WAHAHAHA.” Which kinda meant, y’know, that I had to do it, didn’t I?

I passed by Office Depot on the way home and picked up one of those blank school-project posterboards, scoured the loaders for the World’s Most Epic S/mileage Photo, applied some necessary Photoshoppery, and used an online poster generator to convert the image into a massive, multi-page print.

THEN I RAN OUT OF PRINTER INK.

So it was the following morning that I raided Best Buy, bought the necessary ink cartridges (goodness gracious these things are a ripoff), printed out the image, and pasted them together to form … VOLTRON the S/mileage Defense Force’s ultimate weapon.

SNSD!!!!!! S/mileage challenges you!!! FIGHT!!!

Now, before we get any further into this, I would like to remark that I do love SNSD dearly. Everytime one of their new singles comes out it becomes MY JAM for the entire week and probably several months thereafter, and I would not hesitate to say that the Korean economy’s top three exports are Electronics, Cars, and Seriously Fine Ladies. But as a Hello! Project lifer and supporter of Yuuka Maeda since back when the group Shugo Chara Egg! first debuted, I know where my heart lies. I can SOWONEUL MALHAEBWA with the best of ‘em, but when it all comes down, I will PYON PYON FUMU FUMU YEAH YEAH to my grave.

And really, how can you NOT.

So on Saturday, at about 1 p.m. IN CALIFORNIA time, I packed this huge-ass posterboard in my car and made a surprisingly hassle-free drive into downtown L.A. to meet up with my friend who had been co-ordinating ticket purchases (by a miracle of Ticketmaster, we’d been able to secure first-level seats after all, so FU Powerhouse and Soshified) and also Kimuuuuuuuu who is shorter than I realized. XD The poster comes out, and much luls are had. As well as many puzzled stares.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED.

I would like to thank the associates of JPHiP for their support and finding the poster uniformly hilarious.

Srsly guys

I made a casual stroll around the perimeter of the Staples Center, doing the “Haters Gonna Hate” walk and holding up S/mileage’s leggy loliness for all the world to see. It was pretty hard to miss the Soshified Army, considering that they were all wearing these hot pink t-shirts that will probably go straight into their closets and never be seen again because jfc that color is embarrassing. Even for girls. Most folks saw the sign and just thought “WTF”; several gave me dirty looks or were muttering under their breath; one guy standing in yelled out “S/MILEAGE!!!” and I’m like “YEAHHH!!!” as I passed by. And here I am with a smug, shit-eating grin on my face as I pass through the crowd, taking a stand for all that is good and holy in MY idol world.

It is my only regret that I missed the Soshified forums meetup by about 15-20 minutes; by the time I arrived at the L.A. Convention Center they had already left their meeting room, which would have been a RIOT if I’d stood around there with my poster. LOLOLOLOL!!! But, it was probably in the best interests of survival that I didn’t. (Several folks said to me before I did my stroll, “I hope you come back in one piece.” Quite frankly, I wasn’t too concerned about my personal health, having taken my share of beatings back in my school days; I just wanted the poster to come home in one piece! Wahaha!!)

Sadly they had the Lakers championship banners covered up, which was kinda like FAIL.

Oh, and the actual concert? Well, I just kinda wanted to mention how excited I was to be IN THE STAPLES CENTER for the first time in my LIFE!!!!11 and it wasn’t even for a Lakers game. LOL! I bet Lakers tickets are even MOAR expensive than this, but I still want to go someday. Anyway, the first 40 minutes or something was taken up by a bunch of no-name syrupy ballad singers which quite frankly bored me out of my mind by the time they got to like the 6th guy who was going to croon all 90′s R&B style about how I Miss U Girl and I Want Chu Back. Korean music, keeping alive the spirit of Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men FOREVAR!!!! Kangta did perform this adorable male/female duet though, which made me melt inside and softened me up for what was to come … namely …

I'm missing_Amber! wtf!

f(x)! Who, by the way, were missing their fifth member Amber, which was a major SON I AM DISAPPOINT because as everyone knows Amber has the miraculous power to turn girls gay (if they weren’t already). There was also HOT JUNG SISTERS ACTION in the form of Jessica and Krystal doing Kesha’s “Tik Tok” which was quite charming in its own way.

AND WE FIGHT TILL WE SEE THE SUDDEN LIGHT

The first big shock, for me, was when SHINee came on and there was just this earth-shattering fangirl SCREEEEEAAAAAMMMMMM that penetrated the building and made me wonder if that’s how Justin Bieber concerts sound like as well. Anyway, I managed to get a snap of one of SHINee’s guys wearing the Most Incredible 80′s Jacket ever as if he had stepped into a time machine and just finished waking up from a cryogenic freeze.

And I'm pretty sure the last time I saw a hairstyle like that was in the original Hana Yori Dango. YEAH, when the manga first came out in the 90's.

This was a pretty slick action shot I caught on the spur of the moment.

I had no idea that the concert was going to go on for FOUR HOURS. I knew it was a buffet table of SM Entertainment’s best and brightest, but I had no clue they were going to keep us in the building THAT LONG (at least I can say I got my money’s worth). Due to this lack of foreknowledge, I overloaded on taking pictures and videos of stuff near the start of the concert, leaving not a lot of battery power and memory for the camera. Going into the main part of the concert I basically wanted to get video of SNSD’s performances above all else. This results not in photos but screencap-type images like:

Sunny generally being adorable.

Wink!

Longcat!

MY WIFE!

Y halo thar!

THIS WAY! OVER HERE!

Oh! Oh oh oh!

I also leave you with the ONE video clip that I am going to share with everyone else because it is the least embarrassing one for me personally. By that I mean, on all the other videos you can hear me yelling stupid shit like chanting with the parts of the lyrics I remember, or screaming proposals of marriage to whichever girl happened to be closest on stage at the time. So that leaves:

Now THOSE are some mighty fresh legs, my friend.

I also took a few clips of the male performances, mostly for the benefit of folks like @amyplace [SO I HEARD YOU LIKE YESUNG] and @tokaikko but they were sonically ruined by the Scary Fangirl sitting next to me. Scary Fangirl, are you trying to compete with me for who can cheer the loudest for their favorites? Because I think you won by sheer force of terror. Like, there was this one song that I actually was personally interested in, because it starts with this dude wailing on an electric violin that had me drooling more for the violin than the guy (Henry Lau; I looked it up). But then it turns out that the singer is Heechul from Super Junior, and Scary Fangirl sitting next to me LOOOOOOOOVES Super Junior, so basically my fancam recording kinda goes like

[Heechul belting lyrics]
[WEEEECKA WAACKA WEEEECKA WACKA violin awesomeness]
[fangirl going AAAAOOOOUUUUEEEEAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHH]

Well see now that's just distracting.

I really cannot begin to describe what this sounds like. For the first hour and a half I thought it was some guy behind me, making mocking noises of what screaming fangirls sound like, and it was not until I turned around that I realized it ACTUALLY WAS A SCREAMING FANGIRL. And that kinda scarred me for life. I mean, the sound she was making was somewhere along the lines of:

a) a cow being slaughtered
b) a cat in heat
c) a walrus mating call
d) a tubby Caucasian female vocalizing her unquenchable lust for Super Junior
e) all of the above

She screamed a lot for SHINee as well, but then so did everyone else.

Waaaaiiiillliiiinnnngggggg

I also thought TRAX was pretty interesting since they have that one dude who just rages on guitar for the entire song. Not really a big fan of that style of rock, but I was glad to discover that they DO have rock music in Korea, which up to this point had given me the impression that they have fewer genres of music than they do surnames. I mean you could tune in a single radio station IN AMERICA like “90.3 THE JAM” with all those party beats and random black people crooning about how horny they are, and there you have the entire mainstream musical output of KOREALAND except in a different language. But of course this is probably a totally skewed misunderstanding caused by my K-pop-obsessed associates who are like OMG KOREA IS SOOOO MUCH KEWLER AND SUPERIOR THAN JAPAN HOW CAN YOU STILL LISTEN TO THAT OTAKU GARBAGE. Well, maybe I don’t want to fill my entire life with dance beats and 90′s R&B, you tin-eared twats. And really I can only blame this on the monopolistic music labels and the trend-following fantards who blindly accept everything that’s shoved at them, thus pushing any hope of “different” and “interesting” music into the shadows. (Do they have Korean singer-songwriters? Korean technopop? Korean jazz? I really don’t know! Because everyone just listens to the same shit over and over!)

By the time SNSD showed up to perform “Gee” as part of the finale act, my camera’s batteries had been dead for about an hour. So I just kinda threw myself into the song and screamed “GEE GEE GEE GEE BABY BABY” so loud on the first verse that I actually hurt my throat and had to tone it down for the rest of the performance. In addition, the sheer sensory overload had pretty much pushed my ear-nose-throat system to the brink of physical breakdown. Any moar, and I think I may have caused permanent damage.

As the concert wound down to the last song (a big group ballad for EVERYONE), and the crowd was overcome with glowing feelings of self-actualization, it occurred to me that I was really creeped out by the interstitial video clips that had appeared throughout the concert, where they would play calming healthcare commercial music while the artists said comforting phrases like “Friend … the most beautiful word … SMTown will always be your friend …” I mean, hello, shades of 20th Century Boys anyone? Between that and the emotional overload of large cheering crowds, charismatic performers, and deeply affecting music, it did have the feel of a religious cult celebration. And I did kinda feel that I was being brainwashed. I almost liked it, too … I almost wish I could be as musically uneducated as everyone else and not give a shit about using your brain and just buy into the sheer joy of the SMTown experience. But I heard there was this theater down Akihabara way …

Brainwashed zombies clamoring at the doors.

There was a moment, about 15 minutes before the concert, when I sat down on a bench across the street to rest myself before heading in. And who should be standing within earshot, but four REAL Koreans from KOREALAND, who were not there for the concert but just in the area to enjoy the L.A. Live restaurant/entertainment complex. There were two guys and two girls—most likely in their mid-to-late-twenties, very well-dressed and attractive, the kind that could probably get into SM if they auditioned. And while I couldn’t understand what they were saying, I could tell from the tone of voice that they were joking about the Staples Center crowd, perhaps wondering why soooooo many foreign people are obsessed with a kind of music that those four had probably outgrown years ago.

One of the REAL Korean guys glanced across the street and then said, in quite precise English, “It’s nothing but a bunch of kids!”

Heh.

Tags: idols, k-pop, LOL, S/mileage, SMTown, SNSD