Well for those that read this blog, you know that I said I would record a rap album and I am proud to say that I have completed a few songs and am in the process of writing slash completing more.  I have had so much fun recording the songs and it has just been amazing to be able to be so creative during the process.  I am going to wait until I can put together 8-10 songs before I release them, but I will be posting them here, they will be free, and I will continue to do songs because it really is a lot of fun.  I have constructed a mini-studio in our apartment and by that I mean I open closet doors, use wire hangers and mop handles for mic stands, and I made a pop filter out of an old dress sock, but it does the trick for what I am trying to do.  I do want to say that if you would like to hear what I have so far, please feel free to message me and I will try to mail them to you, but if you are okay to wait that is fine as well.  The songs that are coming are all about things that I felt God has been teaching me recently and I have just really enjoyed the process.  It is not over yet and I will hopefully post some pics of my studio along with the songs just for fun.  Hope to have the album done by the end of next week.  
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I want to say that what I am about to tell you is a true story and it is a long one.  If you have time give it a read.  The setting is late December in Korea.  The situation is that I was in need of some black dress shoes.  Now, I don't have crazy big feet, I wear an 11 1/2, 12 in American size, which puts me at 285, 290 Korean size.  The problem I have is that any dress shoe in Korea that is my size is crazy expensive, much more than I want to pay.  Also, it takes a long time to get to a place that has my size.  One day, I decided to go somewhere close to see if they have my size.  I go to the store and I see a pair of shoes that look good.  I ask in the best mixture of Korean and English I can muster, how much they cost.  The gentleman approaches me and first tells me how big I am, which happens a lot in Korea and then he goes to get his calculator.  Many store owners and workers keep a calculator close by so they can communicate to you the price without having to say it in English or Korean because you might not understand, even though I know my Korean numbers.  Anyways, he types into his calculator and shows me the price.  

Let me tell you a little bit about these shoes.  This summer when I was in America I bought a really nice pair of brown dress shoes at Walmart for 25 dollars.  They were Dr. Scholl's brand and they were brown.  They are awesome.  I'm wearing them right now, it's like a cadillac for my feet.  Anyways, these shoes at this Korean man's store were of no better quality and the calculator said 85,000 won or 85 dollars.  I told him that was too expensive and I would like a lower price.  He agrees and goes back to his calculator.  He's smiling and saying discount and we are friends.  After he types it in he shows me and I'm thinking that maybe I would be willing to pay 65 or 70 thousand because it's a crime that I can't wear some of the suits I have.  I mean I look pretty good in them.  Anyways, he turns the calculator back to me and it says 82,000 won.  He's smiling, but I am staring blankly because I only see a 3,000 won discount.  I see that he is serious and I leave the store quietly knowing that my suits will be unused for the foreseeable future.  

I return home defeated and decide that I will just go to walmart.com and order a pair of black shoes and see if my mom will ship them to me.  I find the pair that I want and I order.  They cost like 20 dollars and I know that shipping won't be that bad so I come out good.  The shoes were delivered quite quickly and I was really happy with that service.  My mom agreed to ship them to me and I received the package on December 23rd in Korea.  I was so excited to have the package because I would be able to wear my shoes with a suit to church on Christmas.  Anyways, I open the shoe box and there they are, two black Dr. Scholl's slip on dress shoes.  I take the stuff out of the first shoe and I see an 11 inside.  I thought I had ordered 12's, but 11's will work I tell myself.  I take the stuffing out of the other shoe and it says 12.  I can't believe my eyes, so I put the shoes next to each other.  They sent me two different size shoes in the box.  I am so angry that I can't even think straight.  I was so mad.  I immediately email walmart.com to tell them what happened thinking that they will take care of me because I have ordered from there numerous times.  I will be honest I was less than courteous in my email, but they replied back to me.

I opened the email with anticipation that it would say something to the effect of we are sending you a new pair immediately we are so sorry for the mistake.  Instead, it says would I like a replacement item or a refund.  I respond that I would like a replacement.  I get an email that they do not have any other shoes in stock.  I tell them I want a refund and they tell me that all I have to do is ship the shoes to them.  I email them to explain my situation and that I am in Korea and I will not pay shipping because the shipping cost will be more than the refund I get back.  They reply that I will not have to pay for any shipping and that is the end of the email.  After I read this I feel better until I realize that they did not leave any instructions for how I can send it back to them without paying for it.  I email them for the information about how I can send it to them.  They never emailed me back.  They never emailed me back.  They never emailed me back.  

So there I was with a size 11 shoe and a size 12 shoe.  I'll be honest with you, I have worn the shoes despite the two different sizes and it's not that bad and boy do I look good.  Just another apple from the random tree.
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Rap Album Coming 02/01/2012
 
Hello friends, it has been over a month since I posted to my blog, which technically means it's dead.  I don't know how the rules go for blogs dying, but anyways I digress.  I wanted to say that I loved writing this blog and I want to keep doing it so I am going to write more.  I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you guys about what's been going on with me and this month has been random.  What I am about to say next is even more random.  

For those of you that have read this blog, you can tell that I am a fan of rap and I stated that I was going to record a rap album and that is what I am currently doing.  I have the equipment finally after a long bout of waiting for shipping, but now that I am ready I will hopefully have it finished within the next few weeks.  After I finish recording it, I will post it here and anywhere else that makes it easy to get it, I'm not going to charge money because I am just going to rap over instrumentals that I did not create.  Let me say this, this is not a joke, I am really rapping about my life, but mostly about Jesus.  I want to rap about something that really matters to me.  I am working on writing things that really express how I feel, while having fun doing it.  I hope that everyone is doing well and I want to say that I will be coming back soon probably in a few minutes with a new post.  Hope everyone has a great day and I will catch up with you later.
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I want to say that I cannot be more excited to be writing this blog post right now.  I have been incredibly busy at the conclusion of this year, 2011, but I'm hoping that in the next year I will be able to write much more.  Honestly, a reason that I haven't been writing is that I have been a little obsessed with the NBA.  I have to confess, I love the NBA, I love it, I really just love the game of basketball and the NBA is the highest level.  This makes it difficult living in Korea because they don't really care about the NBA enough to show it on TV.  The NBA has a package called League Pass that allows you to watch games through your computer live or you can watch them hours after they have already happened.  Lucky for me, they have a free preview of this until January 9th, which gives me that many days to convince my wife that it would be a good purchase.  I'm having the chance to watch a lot of basketball and I've learned some things.

There are a lot of guys in the NBA that do not like to pass the ball.  The only teams that are shown on TV nationally are the good ones or the popular ones.  You will not see much of the Kings or T'Wolves on TV.  This has allowed me to watch a lot of those teams early in the season and there are two players that come to mind, Tyreke Evans and Michael Beasley.  As a fan of basketball, I can say with all honesty and certainty that I know how to play and I know what the game should look like.  Those two guys do not.  I was amazed to see how little they understood the flow of the game and how they could help their teams instead of hurting.  Tyreke Evans almost blew a game against the Lakers because he felt like he had a better chance of scoring against 4 Lakers by himself than passing the ball to his open teammates.  Michael Beasley played well with teammates until the 4th quarter and just completely became Michael Jordan, in his mind.  He did not pass the ball one time in the 4th quarter, he felt that he could do much better by himself as well.  The result, the T'Wolves lost.  


There are a lot of whiners in the NBA.  Every player in the NBA on every play think either that they got fouled or if they got called for a foul that they didn't foul anybody.  It's comical, but it quickly becomes annoying.  Kobe Bryant has been the worst that I've seen so far.  If you look at Kobe wrong, he wants a foul called.  If he is guarded closely by someone, he wants a foul.  The thing is, I am not a Kobe fan, but I can appreciate his talent as a basketball player.  I just wish that he and the rest of the guys in the NBA would stop whining so much about getting fouled or disputing a foul call, just play.

The Miami Heat are really really good.  I think they have put it together and I can see them crushing everybody easily.  Lebron and Wade are attacking the basket, they are not shooting 3's and they are posting up down low.  Watching them play is just amazing because they are two of the best players in the world that play hard and play smart, they pass the ball.  They play great defense, it's just incredible to watch. I hope that they don't have a cake walk to the Finals, but right now it's not looking good.  They have also picked up another quality player through the draft.  The Heat drafted a kid out of Cleveland State University named Norris Cole.  He played four years of college which makes him a very rare thing in the NBA, but the kid can play.  He scored 20 points off the bench against the Celtics the other night and a lot of the baskets came in a close game in the 4th quarter.  I love that here is a kid that played all 4 years, has a good feel for the game, and when they talked to him after the game he was all about team.

Well, that's all I've got for right now.  Just another apple from the random tree, see you next year!!!

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Hello everybody, I want to say that it has been a long time since I posted anything because I was in the process of moving.  We started new jobs in November and our move to our new apartment was postponed until this past weekend, but as all of you know moving is not a one day job.  It's more like a two or three week job that can easily stretch into a month.  Coupled with it being the holiday season and starting a new job let's just say that my life has been a little crazy lately.  To my surprise I actually had some time to get on here and see if The Random Tree was dead.  Luckily, it was not and the past week, I've had a couple of visitors so that's good.  Anyways, let's get to it.

I wanted to talk about moving and the frustration slash the weird things that happen as you are moving.  For starters, we have been in Korea for 2 years and that means that we have accumulated a lot of stuff that we don't really need, but we take it anyways because it's our stuff.  A funny thing about Korea is that there are not many places to get cardboard boxes.  There are a great deal of old people around that walk around with a cart and they collect cardboard so if you try to take a cardboard box and they see you, you better have a knife proof vest on.  They will yell at you, this kind of works out for me because I don't really know enough Korean to get my feelings hurt, but they use the cardboard to get money so I can't take it from them.  You can go to Korean Wal-Mart aka Home Plus, but the only boxes they have are not good boxes.  This left us with only one option, going to the post office and buying cardboard boxes, it wasn't too bad.  We got plenty of boxes for about 30 dollars.  The funny thing is that when you have so many boxes you have to get them home and our transportation in Korea is attached to our body, for those of you that don't get that, it's our legs.  Carrying boxes is pretty difficult, it's not that they are heavy, it's just awkward.  After getting the boxes home, we were ready to start packing.

I didn't realize that we had so many books and binders that were full of teaching materials.  No matter how much I tried I couldn't get my wife to let go of the binders and those things were heavy.  We just had way too much crap, way way too much.  I can't stress this to you enough.  As a husband, it is your job when you move to try and convince your wife that you don't need all of the stuff that she wants to take.  This is ultimately a war you will lose, but that doesn't mean that you can't win a few battles.  I did win a few battles, but ultimately my wife destroyed me and not only that, but she got me to carry everything too.  Why is my wife so much smarter than I am, it must be my rugged good looks, it makes me dumb.  Anyways, I think the one that hurts the worst was the bags, my wife even posted about this on her facebook.  She posted a conversation that we had, I'll share it with you.  
Dennis: I'm throwing this bag away...
AP: No, I need it...
Dennis: You only used it once...
AP: But, I'll need it for the next time I use it...
Dennis: I'm throwing it away.....
Now, I know that you are reading that thinking, why are you whining you threw it away.  You must not be married, of course I didn't throw it away because she sent a mental message to me that made me forget about the bag and I even packed the bags and carried them down to the truck.  The lesson of course, don't ask her, just throw it away.  I want to say that moving was not all bad.  There were some great moments that came in the form of the little Korean man we hired to help us move.  He was supposed to be there at 4PM, at 3:23PM we hear a knock on the door.  I open the door and there he is, about 5'5 couldn't be more than a buck 60.  He says something in Korean and comes right in and goes to the room where all of our boxes are and proceeds to start taking them.  I don't know what happened, but he starting speaking to me in Korean and I think what he was saying was to help him or get out of the way.  I mean this guy was a machine, it was ridiculous.  He was carrying everything down to the elevator.  I was trying to keep up, but it wasn't working out so well.  We take a load of things downstairs and unload it onto his truck.  In Korea, there are little brochure things next to the elevators where restaurants leave delivery menus if you want to order food.  As we are waiting for the elevator to come back down he grabs an entire restaurant's menus and proceeds to fold them a few times.  I didn't know why he did this, I though maybe he had a score to settle with the restaurant, but it turns out he was making a elevator stopper.Let me tell you about elevators in America before I get to Korean ones.  In America if you breathe in between the doors they open back up, in Korea if you are in between the doors they will close on you.  I'm not kidding and if you see them closing and try to put your hand in between them it will close on your hand, I'm not kidding.  So he took this folded stack of menus and pushed them into the elevator opening so the doors would not shut on us as we were loading it up.  We had so much crap, but I'm not kidding you we had the truck loaded up at 4:30.  That truck was loaded down.  As we made the short drive to our new apartment we parked and were met by a security guard.  In Korea, most commercial buildings and apartment buildings have old Korean men that work as security slash maintenance slash giving menacing looks to younger people.  As we pulled up he chose to do the third part of his job and came and started telling me that I had to give him money to move in.  We finally got him to understand that our school owned the apartment and we wouldn't be paying the fee to move in.  He got plenty of good menacing looks in though, he did a heck of a job.  We finally got everything into our new apartment, but as you know you aren't done moving until you unpack.  We got everything into the apartment on Saturday, as I write this it is Wednesday afternoon and I'm surrounded by boxes that have not been touched.  These are the things that happen when you work and it's Christmas and you have to avoid eye contact with old security guards for fear that they might steal your soul.  I know this, moving is not any fun and I'm looking forward to not having to do it for a little while.  Just another apple from the random tree.
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I'm a professional wrestling fan, I admit it, you can judge me if you want, but know that I love some wrestling.  I was getting ready for bed last night and I randomly thought about wrestling and I started thinking about what happens in professional wrestling and I started thinking about what real life would look like if it were like professional wrestling.  I mean you can do some pretty awesome things as a professional wrestler that you can't really get away with in real life and I'd like to explore what some of those would look like if you could get away with them.  Let's get to it.

Let's start with fashion.  Now, most wrestlers wrestle in spandex looking things and that's not cool, I'm talking more about the merchandise.  Whenever a wrestler has a new T-shirt or hat, they wear it to the ring.  How awesome would that be to wear a shirt with your name or picture on it everyday.  I think that if you did that people might tell you that you're arrogant or that it's lame, but I think it would be cool.  I mean think about how confident you would feel to wear a shirt with your face on it, I mean I'm in, I might do that anyway.  

Let's talk about music.  For those of you that have never watched wrestling, I'm going to tell you about it.  Whenever someone comes to the ring whether to wrestle or to even talk to someone, they play their entrance music.  I mean let's say there are two wrestlers in the ring and they are talking to each other, if a third wrestler comes out they play their entrance music.  The other two wrestlers are quiet as they make their way to the ring with their music playing.  I mean imagine if you were at work and you had to go to a meeting and when you got there your music (you pick whatever you want) started playing and everybody had to stop talking.  Now, as you come in you can motion to the people, you can do poses or talk some trash.  How awesome would this be?  I mean really think about that for a second.  Who doesn't want theme music?  I'm thinking that I will start preparing a radio for when I go to work so I can play my theme music as I come in.  I just have to pick a theme song now.

If you watch wrestling you know that everyone has a catchphrase.  I want a catchphrase.  To have people wait for you to say a phrase and then say it back with you.  How cool would that be?  I have to think of a sweet catchphrase and I think I have one, here it goes.  I start it like this...it's like I always say...exactly.  That's my catchphrase, how cool would that be to go to work and when i say that everybody says it with me or people have signs with my catchphrase on it.  

Let's get to the real thing that would be crazy and that is solving your problems with violence.  Wrestling is pretty simple, if you have a problem with someone you have a match with them.  Leading up to that match you get to talk trash about that person, you might even get to jump them from behind while they do an interview.  You get to come out to your theme music to do interviews about the match that you are going to have.  Imagine that you had a problem with someone, instead of hating them from afar you get to have a set time for the fight.  Leading up to that fight you get to talk all kinds of trash about them.  Let's say that it is someone from work.  You can talk about how you are going to destroy them in the ring and you can like wait for them in the parking lot and as they are going into the office you come out of nowhere and hit them from behind.  The best part is that after the fight that was set, it's over you find someone else to fight.  There's no holding on to it.  It's awesome.

The whole experience would be pretty awesome, so I'll close with this if you are my co-worker you better prepare for a fight that involves me wearing a t-shirt with my face on the front and my catchphrase on the back.  You better prepare for me to enter to my theme music and you better watch your back in the parking lot, man I love wrestling.  Just another apple from the random tree.

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Writer's Block 12/09/2011
 
So, I want to say that for those of you that live and die by this site, I know I know it's too many to count, I want to say I'm sorry that I haven't been posting regularly.  This has actually been much harder than I thought it would be and so I thought what I could do is just post little snippets that have been on my mind that I am not able to write an entire post about.  I don't want to call it ramblings or other names that columnists call articles that are about all kinds of different things.  Anyways, I'm just going to call it writer's block and hopefully this will be the last time that I write something like this.  Who knows, maybe I will come back to write a full article about one of these.  Let's do this.

Reach Records is a Christian rap label that features artists like Lecrae, Trip Lee, Andy Mineo, and others, but I have to say that I have gone through almost every video I could find on youtube and for those of you that follow my twitter (@dennydow, @randomtree11) you saw that I downloaded Andy Mineo's mixtape (it was free really, I didn't steal it).  Anyways, it is a phenomenal mixtape, it's just crazy.  The best thing is that lately I have felt really convicted about some of the rap that I was listening to and these guys are just as skilled lyrically, but they are rapping about Jesus.  They are really saying something as well and I just love it.  Check out Fool's Gold by Andy Mineo, it's just a great track.  Also, Lecrae did a song with a secular rap producer by the name of Statik Selektah and it's crazy, it's called "Live and Let Live."  

I saw the new Twilight movie recently with my wife because there was no way I was going to see it.  I have to get this out, the main characters are very attractive people sure, but they couldn't play dead.  I found myself just hoping that one of them would pull off the emotion that they were going for, but they just didn't have it in them.  They struggle with the surprise face and the angry face, because they always have the same look.  I feel like Will Ferrell should show up dressed like Mugatu and start screaming at them, "it's the same look, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills."  If you don't know who Mugatu is youtube it.  Anyways, (spoiler alert, if you haven't seen Twilight but want to you shouldn't read this next part) when she got pregnant with his baby I was hoping that she would give birth to Blade, the daywalker.  I was so excited to share that with my wife, who was not amused.  You take what you can get.

Why is it that people get made fun of for listening to N'sync, but nobody says anything when you listen to Jagged Edge, everybody they are the same except one group is white and another is black.  There is absolutely no difference.  I am so sick of people giving me crap for listening to white boy bands and then saying how much they love black boy bands.  You've heard of New Kids on the Block, they were patterned after a group that came before them called New Edition.  The demographics of America are the reason that everybody knows who NKOTB is, but when I say that I like New Edition they give me the I have no idea what you are talking about face.  They are the same, they sing, they dance, and they don't usually write their own stuff.

The NBA is back and I'm so excited to finally be able to watch some basketball.  The NBA is setting up a dangerous precedent for killing that Chris Paul trade.  I don't think that he and Kobe would have been able to co-exist anyways (both of them need the ball to be effective), but just think that every single trade could be vetoed by the NBA if they deem it not good for the league.  What happens during free agency?  Also, New Orleans and Orlando are going to lose their star players and there is nothing they can do about it, but at least let them get something in return as opposed to what happened to Cleveland when they got nothing for Lebron.  Oh, the NBA where meddling happens.

I've been listening to a lot of rap lately and remembering my days of Get on da Mic and I'm thinking that I'm going to start rapping.  I can feel the streets screaming out for my music and I'm going to give it to you.  I am going to give it a shot, I have a friend that knows what it takes to make a good recording, so I might just find some instrumentals and see what I got.  If I do anything I will be sure to share, maybe I'll make my own mixtape, I don't know about that one.  Anyways, I hope that I can at least just have some fun, I can't be any worse than some of these rappers out there today.  

Finally, I've recently started using Twitter a lot more and I have no idea what some of these abbreviations mean.  SMH, I had no clue, half of the stuff I saw on Twitter I had to look it up on the internet.  Oh, the days when there was no Twitter or Facebook and you had to just go up to someone and talk to them in 140 characters or less, those were the days.  Well, I hope you guys have a great day and an even better weekend. Just another apple from the random tree.
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I used to own this video game called "Get on Da Mic."  This game introduced a new form of entertainment called Rapaoke.  That's right, Rapaoke.  You can guess what that is a combination of, Rap + Karaoke = Rapaoke.  Anyways, this game was loads of fun because it came with a microphone and you could just rap along with your favorite songs including "Dear Mama" and my personal favorite of the game "The Ruff Ryder's Anthem" (I still know all the lyrics to this one, I love DMX, I like to scream out D M X and my dogs bite randomly).  My friends and I played this thing for hours because it was just fun for us to rap, we didn't usually do that, we were too busy hustlin' and by hustlin' I mean playing Ultimate Frisbee and doing homework.  

There was also a unique part about this game where you could just freestyle over a beat.   I don't know how many of you know this about me, but I enjoy some freestyling.  I did it a lot actually and it just so happened that my fellow 2nd floor residents at Blue Ridge heard me rap as well and they would tell me that I wasn't bad.  I know what you are thinking, are you about to talk about becoming a rapper?  No, I'm not, there was an interesting thing that would happen to me every time I would start to rap and that was before I could begin I had to say something.  It wasn't some long speech, it was usually just a one word thing or a sound, like "Uh" or "Yeah."  I literally could not stop doing it even when I tried not to.  I tried to just start rapping, but I couldn't do it without my psyche up phrase or PUP.  

I have always been a fan of rap, not so much these days, but I really enjoyed rap and I used to think it was so funny that some rappers would say certain things before they rapped like their name or the year or their record label.  Let me give you some examples, Jadakiss always makes this weird sound, I can't even explain it, but listen to him sometime and hear it for yourself.  DMX, one of my favorites, enjoys to bark or growl before he gets busy on the mic.  Jay-z always does this kind of breath thing, like uh huh, uh.  Fabolous likes to shout out his label, Desert Storm and the founder of the label DJ Clue enjoys to not only say Desert Storm, but shout it along with his name.  I think it's to make sure that you know who did the song, "DJ Clue!!!!!!!!!!!  Desert Storm!!!!!!!!!"  Another one of my favorites Clipse, which has two members, like to make a sound like he just tasted something that wasn't good, like Eeuccck.  I can't type that out.


Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that I want you to give it a shot and try to rap without saying something like that first.  Try it, I bet that it's difficult.  You need that PUP to get you in the zone.  If you don't know what the zone is, you shouldn't try rapping.  Only us real dudes know about that.  I will continue to try to freestyle without a PUP, but I don't know if it can happen because I have to PUP in order to get into my zone.  Maybe someday I'll put out an album and honestly every song will have an interlude before it that is my PUP, it will just be me talking or growling or something crazy.  Anyways, just another apple from the random tree.
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Living in Korea has allowed me the opportunity to experience things that I would never get to experience in the U.S. and one of those is K-Pop.  K-Pop is the music that dominates the airwaves all across Asia, it is Korean Pop.  It literally is the most popular music in Asia, you can go to Cambodia, Japan, or any other Asian country and you will hear Korean Pop music, it's just a fact.  So what exactly is K-Pop?  I got you covered right here.  We are going to go through the many layers of the K-Pop genre, it's like an onion really, and I will then hit you up with some great youtube videos that you can check out that will instantly become your favorite song.  Let's get to it.

K-Pop is dominated by groups, there are solo artists that succeed, but most of the elites these days are not flying solo.  They are boy bands and girl groups that sing and dance.  Do you remember in the late 90's when N'sync and the Backstreet Boys were everywhere, that's how it is here.  There is one difference that is key, in America there are not usually more than 5 people in a group, but Korea says go big or go home.  For instance, one of the more popular groups, Super Junior at one time had 13 members, but is now down to 9ish.  I mean watching their videos is confusing because you know that everybody wants that camera time.  There are also more traditional groups with just 4 and 5 members.  The girl groups are the same way, the most popular girl group on the planet, Girls Generation has 9 members.  Girls Generation is huge in Asia, they actually just came out with a new song that was produced by the legend himself, Teddy Riley.  That gives them a ton of street cred in my book.  Again, there are also traditional girl groups as well with 4 or 5.  Let's move on to the next thing. 

If you are a boy band or girl group in Korea and one of your members is not a rapper, you better just pack it up.  It reminds me of that Alabama song, you know the one, "if you're gonna play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band."  "If you're gonna have a group in Korea, you gotta have a rapper in the band."  I kid you not, all groups include a bit of rapping in every one of their songs.  Big Bang, one of the more popular boy bands, has two rappers, the amazing G-Dragon and TOP.  The best part about these raps is that you get some good mixes of Korean and English.  They rap the verse in Korean and end in English, it's pretty cool.  So in the middle of rapping in Korean, they'll say something like, "you know my style,"  or "come on."  You'll see what I'm talking about.

We come to another interesting part of these groups and that is the concept of a leader.  In America, we usually associate the leader with the one who sings the most or is the favorite of the fans, but in Korea they actually say this.  So, Big Bang's leader is G-Dragon, 2NE1's leader is CL and so on and so on.  It's interesting in that their is no friction about it and there doesn't seem to be groups breaking up due to jealousy or internal strife.  I kind of like the concept of a leader in the group, it's cool, it's like a C on a jersey of the wily veteran on a sports team.  I have been very surprised that groups do not break up more here because they also seem to encourage their members to make solo albums or another popular things is for 2 or 3 members to make their own album without the other people in the group.  For instance, each member of Big Bang has done a solo album and G-Dragon and TOP did a duo album.  Even though some of these projects were really successful, Big Bang gets together and still puts out albums as a group.  I wish this happened in the states, but Justin Timberlake is not going back to N'sync, it's just not going to happen, no matter how many letters I write.  

I know that there were a lot of knocks on some of those groups in the states in the 90's because they seemed to be very cookie cutter and there were no differences.  I wish I could say that groups were really different in Korea, but the truth of the matter is that they are not.  You will see a couple of groups that are so similar that you will not know which group it is.  There are some that have done what they can to separate themselves from the pack, but for the most part there is a formula that works and they stick to it.  There is not a ton of diversity when it comes to these groups, but there is a group for everyone and there are more than enough teenage girls in Korea to love each group.  Another knock was that they didn't play their own instruments or write their own songs and that can also be said about the groups in Korea and I'm going to generalize here, but the vast majority of these artists are very musically talented, they just don't use those talents for their groups.  There are videos all over youtube of popular artists playing guitar or piano and not just goofing around, but really playing.  I don't think you can say the same for their American counterparts.

Finally, product placement used to be shunned by many recording artists because it was considered "selling out."  That is not the case in Korea, these pop stars are everywhere, they do advertisements for ramen, chicken, beer, clothing, there's even a group that appears in ads for the Seoul Metro company.  You cannot turn on the TV without seeing them.  They also appear on a great deal of talk shows and reality shows.  It's really the complete opposite of America in that sense.  I hope that you have enjoyed the intro to K-Pop.  I leave you with a list of some of the better K-Pop groups that will help you navigate your way through.

Girls Generation
Big Bang
2NE1
Super Junior
2PM
2AM
Wonder Girls
Sistar
Secret
Beast


Finally, here are some of my favorite videos.  Just another apple from the random tree.





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As I sit at work, I like to listen to the radio on the internet and it just so happened that one of my favorite songs came on today.  That would be Nice and Slow by Usher.  I'm sure most of you have heard this song and as I was thinking about the song I also started to think about the video and the video really didn't make too much sense.  Let's break this thing down.  

The first 30 seconds are totally legit, we've got Usher arriving in Paris and he's calling a girl to go out.  I do want to say one thing.  He says, give him 10 minutes and he'll be over.  Well, when he says that he is still in a towel.  There is no way that he will be dressed, out the door, and at her house in 10 minutes.  We need to remix this song, it should be like, "give me half an hour, actually it might be 3ish before I'm over there, I'll call you when I'm on my way."  That would be much better.  

The next 30 seconds are shots of Usher washing his face, that 10 minutes is not looking good, and we see the woman waiting for him by the door.  Okay, ladies I don't mean to hate, but you do not wait for us.  I don't care how beautiful a man Usher is, you do not wait.  You just don't.  We need to change this video, I'm thinking that she is in her room and Usher comes over and she tells him, "oh, come on in, I'll be down in a minute."  That's what would really happen.

Next, we see Usher and his girl making out on a bridge.  I thought that he wanted to take it Nice & Slow?  Oh, you know what, nevermind, forget I said anything, we don't need to discuss it.  Moving on.

Here's where things get crazy, as Usher is "driving around town, cotemplating where I'm gonna lay you down" he is surprised by a group of kidnappers that have come to take his girl.  We see a shot of one of the kidnappers and he looks like Shabba Ranks (do you know who that is).  Anyways, Shabba Ranks and his goons beat up poor Usher and take his girl away.  I have a question, where is Usher's security?  Did he just feel like he didn't need it?  Too bad this video came out before the movie Taken because Usher thought that Paris was safe.  Another question, why did they take the girl and not Usher?  Is she famous?  I'm going with the pop star every time, not the girl that he is with.

Also, as Usher is getting beat up the lyrics of the song don't really discuss this.  He's actually singing, "I wanna do something freaky to you babe, I don't think they heard me, I wanna do something freaky to you, call out my name."  It should be more along the lines, "I just got punched in the face like three times, they really hurt me, I just punched three more times, call the police."  We'll get R. Kelly to do a remix.

With his girl gone, we see Usher at the police station and his girl in a cage while Shabba Ranks' goons taunt her.  Usher is trying to say something to the police and they are probably saying to him, "you're a loose cannon Usher you can't sing and dance and fight crime."  This is not what Usher wanted to hear so he flips the guys stuff off his desk and is held back by  his security guard, whose shift just started.  

So as Usher gets to the part in the song where he spells his name, he is dealing with a lot of things.  His girl has been kidnapped and police won't help him.  I guess spelling out your name gives you the fire to take out bad guys, but as we see Usher, he is wearing an eye patch.  Singing R&B is hAAARRRRRRRRRRd.  Sorry, I had to.  Anyways, that eye patch also gives Usher the power to rip his phone from the wall as his leaving.  Maybe he just needed that to psyche himself up.  That phone was just chilling and Usher is out for blood and he sees it with his good eye and decides it's time to kill that phone.  I respect that.

The climax of the video has Usher riding up to the kidnappers hideout on his motorcycle.  He gives Shabba Ranks a briefcase because I guess Shabba needs money and wouldn't you know it, Usher got him with the old exploding briefcase trick.  Well, it's not an explosion just more of a flash of light and smoke.  It's enough to mess up the three guys and ruin them.  Wait, why does Shabba only have three guys, he had at least 10 earlier, I guess they are with the same company as Usher's security guard, never there when you need them.  Usher really takes it to them and loses it on that one guy that he leg sweeps.  I do have one question about this, where are their guns?  They are kidnapping people they have to have guns, right?  I guess Shabba doesn't have the cash for that.   Mr. Lover Man came out a long time ago, I think those royalties are dried up.

Now that Usher has saved his girl, they ride off together on the motorcycle and building that Shabba was using explodes.  I didn't see Usher rig that up, but I guess when you mess with Usher you get Burn..ed.  Do you see what I did there?  You got it right?  Come on.  

As the video ends, Usher is just talking with is girl and then we see her at a computer just typing Nice & Slow over and over.  I think she is suffering from something.  Maybe being in a cage and hearing Usher sing about taking things Nice & Slow while he beat up kidnappers was too much.  It would be for me.  

Sadly, there is another version of this video that is longer and has an interaction between Usher and the bad guys, but I could not find that.  I'd like to get ahold of that and dub it over with the thing from Taken where Usher is like, let her go and that will be the end of it, but if you don't I'm going to find you.  I'm going to beat you up while wearing an eyepatch and when I leave your building will explode.  He could also say, I have a particular set of skills and they involve me singing and dancing and you trying to kidnap someone without guns.  

I guess we can take some things from this video.  One, if you are a kidnapper, take the pop star and not the girl he is with.  Second, if you want to have a sweet job, work for the same company that Shabba and Usher's guys worked for.  Third, if you are a phone and you see Usher with an eyepatch look out.  Finally, if your girl is just typing the same words over and over, take her to the hospital.  Yeah, just another apple from the random tree.
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