A common sight in Korea, the ginseng capital of the world, is pictures (or jarred specimens) of the ginseng root that resembles a human as closely (or shall we say anatomically) as possible. Sometimes they even have man and woman. Ginseng was originally thought to be healthy because it sometimes took humanoid forms -- so obviously it must be good for humans! Later, we discovered that it actually IS healthy! This was on the side of a subway car.
I've decided I like tea more than coffee. . . though it really ought to have honey in it instead of sugar. If I'm gonna be a tea-drinker, I may as well be a tea snob of some kind or another.
At simpsonizeme.com you can find out what you'd look like if you were a character on the simpsons. Does it look like me ? What say you?
There's such a fine line between crazy and awesome.
The second one's even better than the first one. This is the kind of stuff you might see on a gameshow -- celebrities watch a video clip, or have to partake in some ridiculous game, and then their reactions are filmed and repeated, with much audience response.
This one gets funnier the more times you watch it.
There's nothing crazy about this one. Just a lot of awesome. Pay attention: he doesn't repeat a trick!
His name's tim kelly. He's the world champion three-ball juggler.
Look at how big his hands are.
This guy even more so: huge gorilla arms.
This clip becomes better when you know the backstory: there's this guy named Chris Bliss who goes around juggling three balls in cool patterns to this exact same music, so this guy basically is doing the juggling equivalent of a rapper's diss track -- trumps Bliss in every way, with five balls. His name is Jason Garfield, and I don't know if he's world champion in anything other than awesomeness. Hold on (yay internet) he IS the three-time world ball-juggling champion. He's also (if you watch some of his podcast videos) a bit of a jerk. . . but if you're the world champion at something, I guess you've kind of earned the right to be an arrogant jerk, so I won't criticize him, but I don't have to like him. If you could have found a guy who could beat him, Muhammed Ali would have stopped saying "I am the greatest," too.
I finished the first draft of a play this week. I'm sure happy.
I have cracked up entire dance floors by doing this dance when this song comes on. For some reason, seeing a white dude make a Korean pop culture reference counts as a show-stopper her. I think it's my curly hair.
Here's a silly video that circulated all around the internet a few years ago -- about in 2004 or 2005. It makes me laugh.
numa numa song
On a COMPLETELEY unconnected note, here's a cute popsong that I heard constantly (when there's a hit song in Korea, it's TOTALLY ubiquitous -- it's almost dizzying how much you hear a song when it's number one in Korea, walking past storefronts, etc.) in 2006. Even my little seven year old students would sing along to it. The artist's name is Hyun Yeong. Yes, she is at least somewhat serious.
nuna wei ggum - the sister's dream
Here's another pair of videos that caught my attention for TOTALLY UNCONNECTED reasons. Especially the Choruses. If you wish, you can ignore the imagery and just listen to the music, or you can watch the videos and muse on the objectification of women and the vileness of beauty culture, both in the West AND in the East.
I know what you're thinking with all these videos by now: CEASE AND DESIST ALREADY, ROB!
"Do Something" by Britney Spears
(yes, I just put Britney Spears on my blog. But I'm making a point here, OK?
Now, "Gonna Getcha" by Korea's own number one Pop Tart, Lee Hyori. In this one especially, pay attention to the loving fixation on stuff, especially in the transitions between dance sequences -- car, phone, clothes, those amazing boots -- so many materials to obsess over, it's almost like stuff pornography.
Not to be nothing but disparaging (how do you like THAT triple negative!), here's my favourite Korean songwriter/singer. His name's Kim Kwang Seok, and like Jeff Buckley, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and almost every other artist I love except Tom Waits and Radiohead and Prince (and a few others), he died young. He committed suicide (purportedly) because he was depressed from hiding his closeted homosexuality in Korea's very conservative society. Before his tragic death, this guy was about as beloved as a pop star can be in a country--every Korean my age and up can tell you their favourite Kim Kwang Seok song, and how they felt when they heard the news that he died.
This dude has a gift for melody, an incredibly expressive voice, and a real grace that I love. It's a shame he died and let the plagiarists take over.
This one's called "Letter of a Private" it was made for the soundtrack of the movie "JSA" which is remembered as a high watermark in Korean filmmaking; it's a story about low level soldiers on either side of the demilitarized zone (the Joint Security Area, or JSA is where North and South stand closest to each other), who become unlikely friends. If you ask nicely, I'll do a post about my favourite Korean movies, and one I loathe.
I really like the next one's melody -- my man Kim is a real wizard with a melodic line. I think it and his expressiveness are his best strengths. The song's title translates as "Please Wait"
This is my favourite Kim Kwang Seok song, the one that I think shows everything I love about him. It's also the only Korean song I can even come close to singing in the noraebang (karaoke room). The title is something like "I used to love you". If you're only going to listen to one of these, choose this one.
He even warrants a tribute: here's a tribute to him, recorded by some other big Korean stars. It's another of his best songs, rendered. . . adequately and lovingly, by some other people.
Here's Mel and me and her husband (fiancee at the time) Brent, all at my university graduation.
I made a joke on my blog comments page that wasn't nice to Mel, so with apologies to Tamie's penance post, here's my own penance post.
Mel, also known (to me) as Mellifluous, and Melly-Cat (Melly-cat, oh Melly-cat, what are they feeding you?) is my best friend in Canada. All my students in Korea hear about her so often that "My best friend in Canada Mel" has (along with "My best friend in Korea Matt") become my own personal sigh-inducing equivalent to American Pie's "This one time, at band camp. . . " line.
Mel is great! You can go to her interesting, thoughtful, more-frequently-updated-than-mine blog (link at the side of the page), and learn more about her if you like. Our friendship goes back to a Milton class where we seem to basically have sniffed each other out as fellow artists. (Mel corrected me when she read this, informing me that she sniffed me out as an artist; I just wanted attention. I'll pass that on to you, and let you judge for yourselves whether, from what you know of me, that might be true.) Since then, we've have some of the most amazing talks I've had in my life, some of the most ridiculous laughs, and borne with each other through various "I thought I'd hit bottom, but THAT'S when everything REALLY hit the fan" kinds of crises.
She's one of the best conversationalists I know, very articulate, even for a brunette, and in the top ten list of "nicest/coolest/kindest/most reassuring things anybody's ever said to me," she owns at least a third of the spots. For example. . .
(just kidding. Those are between me and her. I'm such a tease.)
She has a wonderful husband and two great kids I got to hang out with this July when I was back in Canada, and she's an awesome life-saving siren-wailing first-class cool-under-fire paramedic.
Plus, she's kickin' smart, but even though she's kickin' smart, she hates intellectual arrogance (thus keeping me in check).
She's also the one who teased me out of talking about music incessantly (you may all want to immediately hop over to her site to thank her personally).
So this place next door to my school has a bubble machine they run from the balcony all day long.
It's fun to watch people walking by, suddenly startled by bubbles drifting into their paths, and then avoiding, or chasing, or popping, or swatting at them. (See the bubbles?)
When they touch the pavement, the bubbles usually pop, of course, as bubbles do.
But when it rains, and the pavement is wet, the bubbles stick in half-spheres, like bits of glow growing out of the pavement, on one of the busiest streets in Korea, and people walk by without even noticing them, and it makes me happy that such fascinating little things are all around me.
Most people don't even notice them, and, perversely, that makes me happy too, because if most people don't notice them, but they give me so much great joy when I spot them, it makes me think. How much of the wonderfullness (wonderfulousity?) in the world goes unnoticed -- is the difference between hating and enjoying, and immensely loving your life, just a matter of paying more attention to little wonders, and noting the little wonders for what they are? And if 99.9 % of the people don't notice these little bubble-globes, how many brilliant little scintillae am I also missing, because I haven't learned yet how to pay enough attention to them?
I also sifted through scads of old photo negatives, and got London Drugs to scan the best ones, the keepers, onto CD, so that I could preserve them in digital form.
Here are some of the best ones.
Matt's new haircut in Japan
Me with my favourite class ever -- from my first year in Korea.
Me in a field of dandelions.
Me in a tree in Stanley park.
I hid a camera in my sleeve, and took a picture with my university's president as I walked across the stage to receive my diploma, at my university graduation.
Kids playing at a palace on Korean Thanksgiving Day.
One silly Christmas: finishing a roll of film with mom, Deb and Dan.
At an airport in Ontario.
My second favourite picture of my mom and my nephew. (The favourite one wasn't in my pile of negatives. Dad has it somewhere.) I think this one really shows the special relationship my nephew and my mom had.
