CHECK OUT SOUTH KOREAN RAPPER PSY AND GANGNAM STYLE

I haven't written about music in awhile, although I am a marginally talented musician. But recently, the dance craze that I guess has been sweeping the world behind my back the past several months, Gangnam Style, caught my interest. I think I first heard about it on one of the British tabloid/media "newspapers" that I sometimes  read on the weekends. But I didn't check it out on youtube at the time.

Then, a few weeks later,  some news website that I frequent had a video link to the Ellen Show clip from last week that showed PSY showing Ellen and Brittany Spears how to dance Gangnam Style. I'm no Ellen fan, and true as I would have guessed, she doesn't dance well. Spears did an admirable job in some 4" heels and a dress. But this PSI fellow was entertaining simply with his moves and with the deadpan looks he gives most of the time.

Here's the link to PSY's video on YouTube, Gangnam Style.  It's only been out a short while, yet it has spawned many parodies and flash mob clips. There's some funny parts that might not have gotten put into a Hollywood video, particularly the part where the wind blown "pretend snow" paper gets accumulated around the mouth of one of the dancers.

Here's another version by PSY hisself called PSY FEATURING HYUNA, who I assume is the woman singing and dancing in this different video version as well. Hyuna appears in the original Gangnam Style video as a featured dancer towards the end of it.

There are parodies aplenty already, both badly done and well done. I found this one called GANGNAM STYLE PARODY BY BURNT ORANGE TAILGATING who I'll guess are down the road in Austin. It's pretty funny and there are other parodies that are well done of this video as well as flashmob clips.

The best one I saw was the one that made me laugh out loud repeatedly, so loud and so many times that El Fisho Jr. remarked he hadn't heard me laugh like that in a long time, and he's right. The hilarious clip is called DEADPOOL VS. GANGHAM STYLE. Of course, the parodies make more sense and are funnier if you watch the original Gangnam Style video first. It's a good way to spend a few minutes.

Gangnam has nothing to do with gangs, by the way, but is an ultra affluent area in Seoul, where I suppose in addition to the high rent addresses it's  got the shopping and the nightlife. I looked up the translation  of the lyrics to english, and at least in the version I read it's an innocuous plea looking for a classy girl who doesn't bare too much skin that is nice.

Now, what the girl of his dreams has to do with Gangnam, I don't get the connection. But there have been 220 million views of the original video, and millions of views of the parodies that grow day by day as well as the flash mob clips. So I guess lots of folks are being entertained by this. And there's lots of articles in the media discussing just what it all means and such.

I think it's just a fun dance and people have fun doing it and with all of the serious stuff facing the nation and world, folks like an escape. Particularly a free one like this video.

You can search youtube also for gangnam style flash mob clips, and there's numerous ones of those.

I can't tell you anything about this PSY fellow, other than I found that video entertaining and then did some outright guffowing at the Deadpool parody, and it was a fun way to spend part of the evening. I think also I'm going to watch some of the other Deadpool clips, where apparently his costumed persona appears at such places as comiccon. That could be amusing.