"Gangnam Style" -- the throbbing, club-ready single by Korean rapper Psy about the Gangnam district of Seoul -- has elevated K-pop's status and spawned the most-liked video in YouTube history during its 15 minutes of fame.
Those proverbial 15 minutes aren't up yet, either. The goofy video and its silly, cowboy-inspired dance moves have spawned hundreds, perhaps thousands, of spoofs, the Zombeatles.
The video arrived just in time for Halloween, as part of the group's new Kickstarter campaign, which runs through October 31. It's no surprise that "Eat It Zombie Style" crawled from the beautifully bizarre brain of Biff Blumfumgagnge, the mastermind behind local karaoke rock band The Gomers.
The video begins as a reflection in the sunglasses of a zombie who looks like the Cure's Robert Smith. "Eat a brain, eat a human brain," he raps to an oh-so-familiar beat, one that's been blaring from computers around the world for more than three months.
Next comes a reference to the Beatles, as if the Zombeatles have just snacked on the Fab Four's frontal lobes. The lyric "Life is very short, and there's no time/For fussing and fighting, my friend," from the group's 1965 single "We Can Work It Out," becomes "Life is very short, but we've got time/For cussing and biting, my friend." Touché, Zombeatles, touché.
As the lead zombie argues that brains are a delicacy, surreal scenes of Madison zip by in the background. A woman exercises beside Lake Mendota with a brain perched on the small of her back. Zombies ride the carousel at Ella's Deli, waving their invisible lassos as the horses go up and down. No one's safe from a zombie attack -- well, a zombie dance attack -- in our fair city. We're a regular Hellmouth, complete with gyrating ghouls in cowboy hats.
The brain-eating gang reenacts most of the key scenes from Psy's video, even the one involving an elevator and a very, um, unusual take on a horsey ride. Gone is the sexy lady on the subway, but you won't miss her: "Eat It" is filled with scantily clad undead who've got the "Gangnam" dance moves down pat. Zombies are sexy, and they want you to know it.
Whether these zombies make you quake with fear or tremble with desire, they're helping the Zombeatles raise money to record a new album filled with scream-worthy tunes such as "In My Unlife," "I Peel Spine" and "Torture Doctor's Garden." They're also hungry for their next meal, and they don't want leftover Halloween candy. Perhaps Buffy Summers is looking for work this time of year.
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