SMTown NYC: Chasing the Dream

The biggest difference between my SMTown experience IN LOS ANGELES and the one IN NEW YORK was that, in the intervening months, I had finally made some Internette Frandz who were into The Whole Korea Thing but were (1) not complete loons; (2) able to look at different styles of pop music with an thoughtful, critical eye.

At the same time, I was also making a sincere effort to understand the physics of the Korean Wave myself, without freaking out over ridiculous fan behavior or the spammings of bored English-as-a-second-language kids all over the social web. The fact that my Internette Frandz also thought poorly of these psycho-fans was a big help, I think. It all came down to being on a similar wavelength: worship your idols, but don’t be a doof about it. And if you must spaz, spaz with dignity.

So it was with that reformed mindset that I woke up on the morning of Sunday, October 23, and … made sure to go to church first.

THEN it was time to make the trip to my true place of worship: Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York, IN AMERICA.

SMTown NYC Day 3: Tell Me Your Wish

If you want to talk about an inhuman time to get up, how about the loons who camped out around midtown Manhattan all night after the SMTown concert so that they could get their signed Girls’ Generation CDs in the morning. I mean, when people tell you “show up at the Good Morning America studio around 7 am and early arrivals can win one of 50 signed CDs,” that CLEARLY means you should start lining up at 2 am.

So being the NORMAL person that I am, I slept back in my hotel and returned to Times Square the next morning around 7:30 am to the following sight:

Who are all these people and why are they wearing pink shirts?!

In traditional Good Morning America fashion, every 15 or minutes or so the crowd would go wild as the camera focused on the teeming masses. This meant that NORMAL Americans watching this on TV suddenly saw signs such as “Girls’ Generation” and “TaeNy pairing ONLY!” and wondered if there was a new Occupy going on.

The winning sign, clearly.

I also brought my reversible AKB48 troll sign once again:

SMTown NYC Day 2: Bring the Boys and the Girls out

WELL I have about ten bajillion fancam videos to upload from the concert, and I have to wake up in another 4 hours for the Good Morning America fan-spammage where psychotic Soshi nuts are going to crash American network television with signs saying “SMTOWN IN INDONESIA INDONESIA INDONESIA INDONESIA” how much they love SNSD.

So instead I will pad this out into a thousand-word post by including a picture:

Hi girls!

A more thorough write-up to come once I have calmed the hell down.
(And uploaded the videos.)

SMTown NYC Day 1: Into the New World

ARE. YOU. READY?!! AY ... KAY ... BEE ...... oh wait

It should have been no surprise that Koreaboos on the East Coast are pretty much like Koreaboos on the West Coast, except with a better public transit system. With enough transfers and rail tickets, I could pretty much take the trains and subways from Newark, NJ (cheap place to stay) all the way to JFK International Airport just to greet GIRLS’ GENERATION.

This also meant making an appropriate fan sign:

BAAAHAHAHA JUST KIDDING

That’s more like it.

S/mileage’s Fresh Legs Prevail, SNSD Goes Home With Smile And Nod

Japan’s massive boner for Korea went limp on Thursday night as a bunch of loli upstarts nabbed the Best New Artist / Best Newcomer award at the 2010 Japan Record Awards on TBS.

The Hello! Project foursome known as S/mileage—consisting of members Ayaka Wada (16), Yuuka Maeda (16), Kanon Fukuda (15) and Saki Ogawa (14)—took home the prize, triumphing over heavily-favored media darlings Shoujo Jidai (Girl’s Generation) ((SNSD)) (((geez us you girls need to pick a name and just stick with it))).