I Received A Surprise The Other Day
Even though it pains me to say it, I’ve always been one of those dorky nerdy Asian guys. For the most part I am fine with it, but sometimes I wish I wasn’t so shy. Like when it comes to the opposite sex.
My buddy Jay was turning 22 and a lot of his friends, including me, decided to throw him a birthday party and to get him a table at a night club. Velvet Room to be specific. For the uninitiated, Velvet Room is this club that tries really hard to be something it’s not. It’s located in a shopping center right next to a Big Lots store and a dentist’s office. Somehow they’ll manage to get big names to show up every now and then (Jay-Z and P. Diddy come to mind), but for the most part, it’s mostly Asian kids from Atlanta’s suburban hells and wannabe thugs of all races.
The Power Rangers came to me at a weird time in my life. By the time the Rangers had reached the height of their popularity in the US, I was “too old” to be watching the show. Not that it stopped me; I pretended to despise the five teenagers with attitude on the outside, I was secretly rejoicing whenever they’d form MegaZord and whip up on whatever creation Rita Repulsa had in store for them that particular afternoon. Seriously, when the Power Rangers guitar riff hit and the “Go go Power Rangers!” song started it was like liquid cocaine and I would start jumping around all over the place. 
It has been a while since I have done one of my food reviews. It’s not that I haven’t thought about doing them; in fact, I’ve bought several items with the intentions of doing a little write-up… but I always seem to eat them before I get a chance to write about them. (I am a fat ass.) 
Dear 
I have been sitting here for the past 20 minutes trying to come up with a decent intro paragraph for my review of Pumps and a Bumps when I realized that it is impossible to give Hammer a proper introduction and most likely unnecessary. Who hasn’t heard of MC Hammer?! At one point in this guy had it all, but off-stage things weren’t going so well (cue VH1 Behind the Music-transition to black and white…) While many are familiar with Can’t Touch This and 2 Legit 2 Quit, not too many know about his later stuff. I thought I’d rectify that by giving the classic Pumps and a Bump video the popHO treatment.
Hyori’s 10 Minutes was the last article I wrote before I shut down my old website, konton, and in many ways it was a fitting end. Though konton started out as a mish-mash pop culture site, for better or worse, it ended being known for Asian pop. Even though there were signs of it before, 10 Minutes was the final death knell for the golden age of Korean girl groups. SES had split. Baby VOX were pretty much over. Hyori’s star power couldn’t be contained in Fin.K.L. anymore. And there just weren’t any groups around with the charm, wit, and fiyah to replace the old stalwarts. Truly a sad time period… for me at least.
At first glance, Luminous Arc seems like it would be a horrible game. The battle system seems like a gimped version of Final Fantasy Tactics. The controls are horrible. The graphics can’t even compare to some 16-bit era games. Even the story is subpar; it’s filled with Jrpg cliches, and the characters are really really annoying which is compounded by the horrible voice acting. And yet, the game as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts and is actually pretty fun.
Even though I’ve made fun of a lot of old kpop videos here on popho and on kontona, I gotta admit there’s a part of me that yearns for the days when I would spend hours trolling the #finkses irc chatrooms and the soompi message boards hoping to get my hands on a new SES or Baby VOX video. I realized then and now that it was a pretty sad existence. While I am glad that that phase of my life is over, I fear that I am once again getting sucked into the seedy world of Korean girl groups, and I place the blame entirely on the Wonder Girls.
I love Heidi Montag. There. I’ve said it… I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m absolutely smitten by her. Ever since the first episode of the Hills I’ve been hooked mainly due to her antics. Granted, she’s probably the most vapid cunt to have ever come out of a MTV “reality” show, and that’s saying a lot, but she possess a certain je nais se qua that some would kill for. So today, instead of my usual music video review or video game post, I thought I’d just list a few of reasons why I love Heidi Montag.
For obvious reasons, I have never been able to get into Asian boybands. I mean, the main reason I even bother watching Asian pop videos at all is because of all the hot honeys. Occasionally there will be a group that I do enjoy, like HOT or the LA Boyz, but it’s usually because I like to make fun of them in order to feel better about myself. Don’t hate. You’d do the same thing if you were mildly socially retarded and had a pock-marked face.
Aside from maybe “game over”, no two words make gamers wince as much as “licensed games”. They have all the potential to be great; recognizable characters, backstory, built in audience, etc. But when a developer acquires a license, they feel as if they can release any old shitpile of a game upon the unsuspecting audience and expect us to gobble it up. Case in point, RoboCop for the NES.
I remember the first time I ever laid eyes on Kim Smith. The year was 1999. I had subscribed to that manliest of men’s publications, Maxim, in hopes of impressing some of my friends despite the fact that I just wasn’t into it. I don’t recall who the covergirl was or any of the other featured models, but I immediately fell in love with the fresh faced girl with the giant DSL’s in a Guess ad. I immediately hopped on the internet hoping to gather every single bit of information I could about this mysterious girl…
Ayumi Hamasaki has been one of those Asian artists that I always wanted to write about but never did. It’s not that I dislike Ayu, because I actually dig her music and music videos. She has her own sense of style; something that’s rare in the Asian pop world. (Seriously, 99% of Asian music acts emulate other Asian music acts who, in turn, emulate other Asian music acts and so on…)
