Adventures in crashing publicity events

[Normally, I would relegate a post like this one to my quips and responses post, but this one includes pictures, so it's best to leave it out in the open.]

The always controversial, often self-absorbed, frequently clueless, and usually trying just a little too hard to be cutesy Shelton Bumgarner* has presented us a guest-post post at The Marmot's Hole talking about so-called "Hallyu Hipsters" (Hallyu, for those of you living in a cave and/or the US, refers to the so-called "Korean Wave" of Korean pop culture sweeping across East Asia; Hipsters are, as best as I can figger, is a 1930s term referring to people with very large hips).

While my own deepest darkest nightmares involve an increasingly isolationist United States backing away from its uniquely qualified role as primary Northeast Asian peacekeeper, thus leading to an arms race and eventually real-life shooting wars between Japan, China, and/or possibly the Koreas, Taiwan, and Russia, Shelton's fears are that people will find Korea cool without him having brought it to them:

Please, Naborat Jeebus, don’t let the hipsters co-op Hallyu in the United States and turn it into the latest trucker hat. Just the idea of seeing Ashton Kutcher, Danny Masterson or, God forbid, Lindsay Lohan Wilmer Valderrama in a hanbuk as they stumble saunter into some chic Hollywood nightclub is enough to make me reach for my gun…er…soju.

Mmm...okay. But you're too late Shelton. Britney Spears herself—the Queen of...the Queen of...the queen of whatever trailer park she's from, I guess—has already broken the hanbok barrier. Two and a half years ago, in fact.

I was there and it was not a pretty sight [see photo at bottom]. Britney likes pink, but her choice of a pink hanbok was truly garish. She might have looked quite stunning, though, in a darker one with more subdued colors, like the picture below with what's-her-name, from that movie...with the thing. You know...we saw it together. Don't you remember? What's wrong with you?

Anyway, Britney has probably scared off plenty of Hollywood's most stunning creatures from trying on a hanbok, at least until the end of the decade. Besides, someone like Lindsay Lohan would run the risk of falling out of it, if you get my meaning. Not that I wouldn't pay a small pay-per-view charge for a program featuring something like that.

Anyhoo, I did want to mention that I was at the scene of the fashion crime when Britney tried on the garish gown of Goryeo. In fact, I asked her a question at this PR event.

I was going to ask her what it was like to kiss Madonna, but my conservative co-workers advised me against that, saying that no one in Korea would dare ask such a thing.

So true, I thought, so instead I asked her what she thought about music piracy and how that problem could be resolved, thinking that if she gave a half-way thought-out answer it might end up being picked up by the wire services and I'd be on television worldwide.

She answered (and it helps to imagine a Louisiana trailer trash accent for this), "That's really bad, and I think someone oughta do something about that."

"Dumb as dirt," is what went throught my head, and which I momentarily feared had crossed my lips (though that, too, would have gotten me international exposure).

The people immediately following me asked her what it was like to kiss Madonna.

* I'm just kidding. I kid because I love...to kid.

Photo: While wearing this traditional outfit, called a hanbok, Britney Spears said she felt "like a Korean empress," especially after several Japanese government agents rushed the stage and tried to stab her. The ominous image behind her, by the way, is the Ghost of Career Past.