All I can say is, sometimes you shouldn't take life that seriously. I like kpop because it is unabashedly superficial. The industry doesn't even bother trying to hide that it is a machine of dramatically over the top dance friendly singalong songs sung by impossibly good looking idols. And in a sense sometimes that is one mother kind of awesome. It's supposed to be entertainment anyway, it might as well look good.
One mother kind of awesome. No actually, nine kinds of awesome. Bring the girls out!People who know me will know that I'm a very rational person who has the tendency to do random crazy shit, as the entry before this will testify. One of the lines I hear most often is this - "You totally do not look like a kpop fan." By this, I take it to mean that I am not a 16 year old girl wearing braces. Which is a good thing. 16 year old girls are responsible for one of the greatest musical atrocities of the world, also known as Justin Bieber. Also, I need to maintain some form of credibility in the corporate jungle.
This tendency for craziness though saw me queuing in a line for the concert several hours before. However, my friends who were far greater fans than I was had saved a place for me, thankfully, or I'd probably never have made it. Just to give an idea, the tickets for this concert sold out within several hours. And the queue for the mosh pit went an entire round around the whole indoor stadium. Have you ever seen the size of the indoor stadium? Now imagine a two rows of people, seated, going one whole round around it. That's how many people there were just going into one mosh pit. And there were three. A mindboggling number of pink warriors.
It was quite a motley group I queued with though, one of which was a 16 year old girl (but of course), who told me before the concert that she thought she was going to die of excitement because her heart was beating very fast. I thought that she was being crazy, until one of the guys in the group told me the same thing. It was then I realised that maybe I was the only relatively sane one still around.
This same 16-year-old girl would later make one of the most epic statements of the concert. But that's for later.
We were quite lucky, because our group was apparently the last in line of the first group to enter the mosh pit. So when we got into the mosh pit, we were in the 2nd row. You know those crazy people you see on the news screaming their lungs out at their fans? Yeah, we were just right behind them. We were nowhere less crazy, but at least the camera wouldn't pick us up that easily. In front of me was a bunch of young girls, and behind me was a bunch of Indonesian fans who had flown all the way to Singapore just to catch Girls Generation.
Now, I have attended my fair share of concerts. Even concerts filled with screaming girls brandishing lightsticks. But this was easily on another plane. It was a concert filled with the craziest most high fans I have ever seen. And not all of them were girls. Many of them were guys screaming like girls.
The moment Taeyeon opened the first line, the crowd went nuts. If they weren't nuts enough when that metal cage opened to reveal the nine girls, they reached a new level of nuts that superceded anything before it. In terms of energy level, it was like "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!"
The Indonesian guys behind me were screaming but in a manly voice so they sounded like silverback gorillas in heat, and they started shoving. But I could hardly have given a shit. From where I was, at that distance, at that angle, all I could see was pairs and pairs of perfectly straight legs. It quickly became apparent why the guys were shoving. It is one thing watching the music videos, and another actually seeing those live. At least you know for sure that it isn't some camera trick. These girls really do have ridiculous legs.
This video is actually from the 2nd night that I didn't watch but the first night had the same performance, only that the security guy was being a bastard so nobody got good fancams of it. The concert had a strict no photography or videography policy, which meant that the security guy was walking around asking people to read the English on his stupid sign, when nobody gave a flying fuck because all people wanted to listen to at that point was Korean.
And the concert sure didn't pull out any stops. At certain points they had the girls suspended in mid air, and at another they had them on a giant pink boat. And there were countless other songs and solos.
You might wonder, why was everything pink? Well, that was their colour. And it sure didn't stop many guys wearing pink shirts to show their love for them. Well, I am a fan, but even as a fan I draw certain lines. No pink T-shirts. Otherwise, it was a good thing that none of you saw me there, because I was a screaming pink lightstick waving madman chanting in Korean. You only live once, so for 3 hours of your life, you can afford to be a pink lightstick waving madman chanting in Korean. Yes, I'm rationalising it. And no, you are not allowed to show me why that is faulty logic.
And here's where the epic line comes in. Somewhere after that song above, the 16 year old girl on my left tapped my shoulder and pointed to the lightstick I was waving like an idiot.
She said: "You have the most special stick. It's pink and shiny and it flashes."
Innuendo aside, that felt exactly like I had been given an honorary membership to the sisterhood of the unicorn and pony club. Heck, man enough to wave pink lightstick, as long as no one I know ever sees me doing it.