On festival days, go to a folk village or a temple, and you can see demonstrations of traditional Korean games, including this one -- like in the cartoons when you jump on a plank and fulcrum and you shoot somebody up in the air, except in Korea it's an acrobatic form. Dancers/acrobats do turns and twists and stuff in the air, and send each other way up high. I was once told by a friend that noble women, who were usually confined in their palace walls, would play this game to see over the palace walls, to the world outside.
At temples, especially during festivals, you get these big stacks of candles set out for people making a wish or prayer.
Here's a picture of a shiny street. I call the neighbourhood where I work "megawatt alley".
I saw this ad poster. It made me smile. Western film history (Wizard of Oz) and ancient Chinese history together. The wizard of Beijing. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. . . "
I've always wished I were bright enough to use the line "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" when I'm talking bulls__t and somebody calls me on it.
This restaurant name makes me laugh, because it's making fun of Konglish.
I got blisters on my feet by walking too much in a new pair of shoes, but now they're finally better. I like walking around -- I walked right over one of the downtown mountains, and that made me happy. Now I'm gonna go outside and find a street I've never walked down before.
this august has been unseasonally wet. Most augusts are really really hot and humid in Korea, after a couple rainy weeks in July, but rainy season is all out of wack this year.
but if life gives you lemon, make lemonade, and if August gives you rain, take more pictures of bubbles on your street.
living where I do, there are a few hobos I see running around regularly. I've started to get to know some of them.
There's the one who keeps knives taped on his walking stick. Don't mess with that one. There's the one who's dressed in black and has a gangster moustache. He looks kind of young, he's always at least half-cut, but he also has a tendency to take a few steps that look as if he's about to go into a pretty darn powerful taekwondo jump-spin-kick. I wouldn't want to tangle with this one. I think he's a gangester, he looks like a tough old bastard.
My favourite is the one who looks just a bit rotund still, and every time I see him he's carrying a newspaper. I like to imagine he's a poet, composing poems in his head. He has these bookish looking glasses, and he always has a coy half-smile that makes it seem like he's perfectly content to be a hobo, as long as he has a cardboard box to sleep in and a newspaper he can sleep under after he reads it.
The nice thing about hobos is, even the gangster-looking one isn't intimidating or menacing in the least. In most western cities, if there's a public park known as a hobo hangout, people go out of their way to avoid walking through it, for fear of being mugged for drug money or something. In Korea, even in downtown Seoul, if you leave the hoboes alone, they'll leave you alone. I love this country.
Two of my most wonderful friends have come into contact and become friends through the links on the side of my blog page. I LOVE when my friends meet/connect with each other. Spread the network!
I have a five day weekend, and I just got back from a short trip out of town. Mercy me, the landscape was almost like being back in Canada. In Korea, mountains are described as deep instead of tall, because of the layers of mountains behind each other, each going closer to the horizon.
After that, I watched "Howl's Moving Castle" with my girlfriend at my house. Entrancing! Gorgeous! Rapturous. Miyazaki's the same guy who did My Neighbour Totoro, which I've discussed before in my blog, and he just might be my favourite single artist working in movies (thought Charlie Kaufmann, the writer of "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is also in contention, as well as the cinematographer that did "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and "Hero". Miyazaki's stories are charming and touching; the animation is technically dazzling, but always serves the story. He respects his audience, and stays true to his characters at the same time as creating dramatic conflicts of motivation. Often/usually, his moments of violence or clash are hinted at rather than portraying violence onscreen -- you will see the trap set and sprung, see the chase, or the aftermath, but the violent action is left unshown. His worlds are full of magic, but the magical creatures work by a logic as cohesive (even more cohesive and sensible) than the Harry Potter world.
(PS: here's my beef with Harry Potter. Why can a wizard just do fifty spells in a row -- wouldn't that be exhausting? I mean, every other difficult task a human can do: lifting a heavy weight, convincing a stubborn person to do something, defeating a person in hand-to-hand combat, shooting an orange ball through a small hoop while five people protect it -- are physically or mentally exhausting, and most take practice to become good at it. Why doesn't Hermione need to take a break and recharge? All she needs is to know the right words and the correct wand movement, and she can perform ANY spell, as often as she likes, as quickly as she can repeat the incantation and perform the correct wand movement -- if magic were real, wouldn't there be certain spells that would take a lot of training to learn, or that would demand so much willpower you'd be exhausted once you'd finished it? I'm sorry I just think that if there WERE wizards and witches, and there WERE a killing curse, it would be such a powerful bit of magic that even a dangerous, powerful wizard would be exhausted for two days after performing it. Maybe the difference between a powerful and a weak wizard would simply be how much magic they can perform without exhausting their energy stores. Maybe I'm really asking, "where does the magic COME from?" with this musing. . . oh well. Rabbit trails.)
I'm happy these days. I got a note from my funniest student saying "I really appreciate your teaching", and that's always warming (especially because adults don't do that as often as kids do). So I'm happy now.
Ummm...
So in the last two months, here's the input I've had for my blog:
1. "less writing. all that text is daunting" 2. "you post way too infrequently" 3. "you post just frequently enough to help me feel updated without burdening my busy life with information overload" 4. "less videoclips and more writing in your updates, please."
By which I've decided I'm just going to manage my blog how I like it. Because any old whatchamacallit from who knows where can read this thing, I DO have to be aware of what goes on here, but I will continue to post things that make me happy, whether they fit YOUR preferred medium or not. And if you don't like the internet clips, well just remember that I'm the guy who chose those particular clips as the ones I wanted to share with you, so think of them as an alternative way to get your finger on the pulse of old roboseyo -- kind of like the way people sometimes say "Can I look through your music collection" just to get a different kind of handle on a person than you can get from reading e-mail or having a conversation or listening to them tell stories. I can't exactly show you another angle of myself by bringing you to my favourite restaurant or posting the smell of my cologne, so clips will have to do. Also: be aware I only post the stuff I really love -- I don't go looking for stuff to put on my blog; only the cream gets on here -- the kind of stuff I'd be excited enough in person to say "OK, I'm gonna pause the conversation for three minutes to play you this song."
Think of it as me communicating with you in multimedia. and it's good stuff, I'm posting. really.
In that vein, without apology, here's the cleverest commercial I've seen in ages: cute, touched with a little pathos, and about an important subject. It won awards in Germany.
That song was called "I'm Still Here" and it's a good third of the reasons I love tom waits. This next one is called "Hold On" and along with Martha, I Hope that I Don't Fall In Love With You, The Heart of Saturday Night, and Time (none of which had satisfactory versions on Youtube), is my favourite Tom Waits ballad.
Wait. found "Time"
He also does wacky strange amazing interesting stuff like this. Without ever using a synth in any of his music ever. "Hoist that Rag"
(this one, if you listen to the words, is absolutely hilarious. Cemetery Polka)
though rough, his voice is surprisingly musical -- it fits his arrangements and atmospheres perfectly every time. plus, the lyrics are, to a song, beautiful and interesting and the most poetic songwriting I've read except Leonard Cohen.
You don't have to, but I like him.
(also listen to him tell a story. he's an awesome engaging performer, to boot. Song: Cold Cold Ground)
However, what you DO have to see, and will almost certainly like, is Ratatouille.
The people over at Pixar have made yet another wonder of a movie. This one's about a rat that wants to be a chef in Paris. He meets a sad-sack kid who needs a boost, and they collaborate to try and get Chef Gusteau's old restaurant back on its feet.
It contains two of my three favourite Pixar moments of all time. 1. when the food critic takes a bite of the ratatouille, the way they show the impact food can have on a person is perfect, perfect, perfect. Worth the entire hour and a half leading up to that point. 2. when they use sound and colour and shape to describe the way tastes mix together, two or three times in the film. It's pure genius, and a bang-on representation of how tastes are unique, and create something new when they mix.
(The other favourite Pixar moment, and one of my favourite moments in all of film, is the last five seconds of Monsters Inc. So understated, but again, perfect.) I'm not putting up clips. You have to see the movies. The clips wouldn't mean as much without the movies around them, anyway.
(one more of tom: can't resist: "I don't want to grow up")
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).
