Oddness/Weirdness

It's  Guest Blogger Week  at Oddness/Weirdness!  I'm sure you're wondering what that entails, right? Well, a fellow blogger approached me about writing a post for her blog about something that I really feel strongly about in the world of Kpop.  I thought that was such a good idea that I decided to borrow it for my blog. I begged asked some of my awesome blogger friends to help me out and, surprisingly (and graciously), they said yes! These fabulous women are a super diverse bunch. They come from all walks of life and all have their own unique niche in the Kpop blogger world. I'm excited to present their posts for your enjoyment, and I hope you'll be as interested to read them as I was. You'll be missing out if you don't! The first post is written by Stephe of CloudUSA.org .  She's the co-founder of that site, as well as a power blogger, technical writer, Fine Fabrications Fiction Focus Group facilitator, fantasy & paranormal novelist, &

Today my fave fansite,  Cloud USA , posted a vintage Rain video from back in 2004 and they inspired me to wax nostalgic about Rain.  I haven't really fangirled over Rain in awhile on this site and that is just sad, since he's my man and all.  Ok... ok... everyone relax... I'm kidding (backing away from the Clouds slowly)!

My favorite Kpop star, Rain, will be coming soon to a theater nowhere near me (probably) and looking all kinds of hot.  He stars in the movie R2B: Return to Base, which will be released in August of this year.  

When I started this blog in October of last year, I had my fingers crossed that I'd get at least a few views.  I had no idea what the hell I was doing and pretty much learned by doing and lots of research.  If you went alll the way back to my first month of posts, you'd see what I am talking about.  I didn't have any sort of clear direction, I just knew I wanted to blog, what I wanted to blog about and that I wanted to my sarcastic/silly personality to come through while doing it.

I'm not usually a label whore, especially for those designer brands that are all about putting their initials all over everything, but for some reason I can really get into the brand MCM.

I'm so excited to share my admiration and love for this man's smooth and luscious voice.  I already featured him in my day 2 post about a zombie apocalypse but I had to include him in this one too.  I'll say it again, he's not quite an idol anymore but he's just too good for words.  That would be Rain, of course. I've already waxed poetic about Rain a few times on this blog so I'm just going to let you listen to him be all soulful while I fangirl over to the side.

Ok so we all know without a doubt that this Idol Style post was coming.  I mean, we ALL know I love me some Rain, right??  That goes without saying.  He's just the bees knees... he's super talented, HOT, funny, HOT, (apparently) a nice guy, and also... umm, yeah... did I mention hot??  I'm not going to mention just how many pics of him I went through to choose the ones I'm including on this post.  I will say that there are so many great pics that I'm considering doing 2 posts.  Anyway, Rain definitely has great style and he fills out his sartorial choices superbly, imho.  I'm not biased... much. Without further ado...

Let's not pretend here:  Today I pretty much just wanted to ogle hot and/or shirtless pictures of Rain. Yummers...

I've been a bad girl.  I haven't posted much about my Kpop obsession Rain.  Sadly he's in the military right now (sniffle) so his fans haven't been treated to a barrage of almost daily news and pics and videos about him.  We miss him!  Well... I know I do.  So today I'm making up for being a bad Rain fangirl by drooling over his hotness a bit on my blog. The following is a fanmade compilation of his "Hip Song" April-May 2010 comeback stages, edited by LunaLuna. Enjoy!  I certainly did. Source:  eye0rain

I hope everyone has/had a great, safe time tonight and that the coming year will be filled with nothing but good things. One of my New Year resolutions, as I mentioned a few days ago, is to post daily.  Another is to get a good following for this blog.  Hope they come true! To celebrate the coming of 2012, I'm posting a few fancams of Rain from his Adieu concert held on December 31st, 2010.  That concert was an inadvertent birthday gift from Rain and the Clouds that posted up fancams so quickly it was almost like being there, even though I'm all the way on the other side of the world.  These videos bring back good memories so I thought I'd share them with you. Let's count down with Rain: Source:  ratoka9 Source:  RainOeye1982 Hope you have as much fun as Rain did that night! Happy New Year!!

First circulated pic of Rain after he is officially done with boot camp.  All I have to say is "Awwww!!" Source: hongcube @ twitter via @yfrog There's his dad all the way to the right. Edited to add: Source: christianjeong @ twitter Edited to add: Source: riannejade @ twitter You can tell how much hard work he put into boot camp training by the amount of weight he lost.  I'm sure I'm not the only Rain fan that's super proud of him.  Rain fighting!

I love watching a good Kpop dance practice video almost as much as I enjoy watching a group or singer perform a song live.  This way you get to see them in their natural habitat (aka practice room, where they probably spend about 90% of their time) and you get to see the performance straight on with no annoying camera angles.  I mean, I love you KBS Music Bank and others, but really... sometimes I want to slap your camera men. Here are a few of my favorites... Rain first, of course! Hip Song :

When I tell you I've been looking for a complete and clear version of this video for about a year, I'm not exaggerating.  I mentioned it on twitter recently and a very sweet Cloud named @CloudUnite posted this link for me like 2 seconds later.  Rain fans are so awesome. Source: kimkeanasona1 The best parts are his dance break at the beginning and then at 5:19.  A must watch for all Clouds and just ever so unfff.

Out of the many ad campaigns Rain has had, this is definitely my favorite.

So for the past year I’ve been kind of obsessed with something. Obsessed in a good way, of course. That “thing” would be Kpop. I know…I know… You’re thinking either, “What the hell is Kpop??” or “Why would you be interested in all of that? You can’t even understand what they’re saying!” Well, let me tell you why and how I fell into that obsession and why it continues to this day. Really, it all started with a man named Rain. In June of last year I finally decided to watch the movie Ninja Assassin. I love martial arts movies and movies with great special effects and gore and this one promised to have it all, AND it was done by the Wachowski brothers. What more could I ask for? I’d missed it in the movie theater and had kind of forgotten about it. I had no idea who this guy Rain was and, actually, I’d been kind of scoffing at the fact that he used the word “rain” as his name. Anyway, I proceeded to watch. It was bloody, gory and had tons of martial arts… then this Rain guy showed up:

South Korean Sensation Rain Enters Military as Hundreds of Fans Bid Him Farewell 10/11/2011 by Sofia M. Fernandez, Lee Hyo-won The pop singer-actor’s latest film, Soar Into the Sun, will be released in 2012. Is Rain the South Korean Elvis ? It certainly seemed so by the turnout of hundreds of fans in Seoul Tuesday that came to bid the singer-actor farewell as he entered military service. Like Elvis, who served two years in the U.S. Army, Rain will be an active-duty solder for the same amount of time with South Korea's Uijeongbu 306 Reserve Battalion. Military service is mandatory for all able-bodied South Korean men. Artist who have tried to avoid duty, have suffered career backlashes, reports the BBC . Rain will be off the public radar for the next two years, but fans will be able to watch him in military action through his air force movie, Soar Into the Sun . In Soar, Jung Ji-hoon – Rain’s real name, which he prefers to use for acting projects – plays a talented yet