My sister doesn’t play well with other Chansung fans.
In fact, she doesn’t play with them at all. She divvies them out. Let’s say there are a million fans of the K-pop group, 1400 Military Time. [Remember, we’re calling them that to protect the innocent, but I think you can figure out which K-Pop group I really mean.] Of those million, she has managed to assign 999,999 of them to the other members of 1400 Military Time, leaving her to be the lone fan of Chansung (aka John). Now, while it is true that a couple of the members have tremendous solo followings, there are others to whom I think she is giving too much fan credit. (This section gets strange. Roll with me.) For example, one of them could easily be my mammaw had she been Thai and a man. You can only wear a mint green silk shirt, blush polyester suit and sockless loafers without being someone’s mammaw waiting with a soft pretzel in the shoe department at the mall. And no, my mammaw wasn’t watching Fantasy on Ice Makuhari with that soft pretzel. Mall soft pretzels and Rapture Makuhari soft pretzels are two different things. Keep up. My point is, “Thai Mammaw” can really only account for about, say, 50 fans. But, if forced to pick (and please don’t force me to pick), I would be one of the 50. Everybody loves their mammaw.
I’m not sure what my sister thinks was the purpose of Chansung being in 1400 Military Time all these years before she discovered him if no one else liked him at all. Oh wait. I just remembered Lance Bass in *NSYNC. Ok. I guess sometimes it does work out that way…
But you know which member of 1400 Military Time deserves 900,000 of those fans? Mr. Cream Cheese Gimbap. You haven’t lived until you’ve watched a K-Pop star improvise a song about how “Cream Cheese Gimbap is the BEST” as he eats it while dancing in the dressing room. My laughter level landed slightly higher than “Sauce” printed across Yuzu’s chest and just short of the “I hear you buy it as a character in a flying show” tweet. Of all the videos my sister has shown, this is hands down my favorite–much to her dismay considering Chansung isn’t heavily featured in it. However! He gets an assist for standing there looking amused, confused and…hungry.
Come to think of it, Chansung always looks hungry. Especially in that chicken eating video. Shudder. Maybe it would’ve been better if he had improvised a song about the chicken as he inhaled it. Hm. Nah.
Yuzu, on the other hand, never looks hungry. Ever. In fact, food appears to frighten him…unless of course it’s raw egg rice. And in that case, the food frightens ME. I’ve even noticed that sometimes Yuzu doesn’t appear to know how to eat. Occasionally there will be a video where a cake is placed in front of him and a fork is thrust into his hand. And nine times out of ten, he looks confused.
“What am I supposed to do with this pointy silver thing?”
“And why is it SILVER???”
“And I’m supposed to put the food WHERE?”
In his defense (because I’m always going to defend Yuzu, I think that’s been made pretty clear) I imagine he is more accustomed to using chopsticks and THAT is why he holds a fork the way I hold a baby: terror stricken and bound to drop it at any moment. It is bizarre and ridiculously endearing (how Yuzu holds a fork, not how I hold a baby.) However, I did see an interview where Yuzu said his favorite food when he goes home to Sendai is–wait for it–beef tongue. This is the part where my sister took her own victory lap around my apartment. Sweet chicken cartilage vindication. (I’m pretty sure that was also a translation of one of her early Korean tweets). Yuzu’s affinity for this food came up in a text thread the other day while I was at work. I texted, “We don’t talk about that.” My sister’s response?
“At least now ya know he likes tongue…”
Thus killing that text thread for the day.
I mean, was I mortified? Yes. Was I surprised? No. But full disclosure? I sat at my desk grinning for the next thirty minutes…blaze. Hey. I’m modest. Not dead. And it had been a wringing hands horror face Yuzu Tableaux de Panique kind of day. Cut me a break…and pass the fire extinguisher.