If you've been listening to the podcast I've been doing, you know some of my positions on US politics. I have opinions, y'all!
So far, my favorite take on Trump's Covid diagnosis has got to be Jake Tapper from CNN.
CNN’s @jaketapper: “Sick and in isolation, Mr. President, you have become a symbol of your own failures. Failures of recklessness, ignorance, arrogance. The same failures you have been inflicting on the rest of us ... Get well and get it together" #CNNSOTUpic.twitter.com/XXA5uC91Ea
"You have become a symbol of your own failure. Get well, and get it together."
I have a feeling few minds are actually changed by these videos (before the videos, it was webcomics, and/or SNS text blocks) where one side of one of our culture wars has their position crystallized into a concise, clear expression. I understand that the function of viral clips like this is probably mostly just preaching to the choir so that they can nod along, pound the desk, shout "Heck yeah!" and feel right about their position. I even know that pickling in self-reinforcing content exacerbates the echo chamber/information silo effect and makes it harder for dialogue to happen across political alignments. I know all that, but still... that was well put.
If Mr. Tapper wasn't enough for you, I also made a thing that I'd like to share.
If you would like to know my thoughts about Donald Trump's performance at the September 29, 2020 presidential debate (jackass trying but failing to score a knockout punch, so combining the worst traits of a drunk uncle and a hyper toddler instead...but for understandable reasons, given who we're dealing with), the conceit that debates are supposed to persuade undecided voters (4:50), the thing we learn from his behavior by reading between the lines (7:24), his subsequent Covid 19 diagnosis (8:52) (so frustrating that there is so little good faith or trust that even a White House health bulletin has people asking 'What's the angle here') what some of those angles might be (9:23 and 11:20), the way this distracts from what we should be talking about right now (10:27), the tough guy image Trump's cultivated (12:04), whether Trump even could pull off a con like a fake Covid infection (13:10), or the people gloating (14:30) or wishing Trump ill online (14:58) and how that plays into what happens to Trumpism next... go ahead and watch this!
And... if all that political stuff was too much, here's a video of a street performance that I keep coming back to.
A fellow in the UK has started a Youtube series during his Covid 19 stay-at-home quarantine, and by sheer coincidence, he came up with the same name for his series as I made for my plague film series!
His name is Rob, just like mine, so naturally I agreed to be interviewed for his YouTube channel.
I'm fond of his channel and quite enjoyed this interview, so everybody, please check it out!
Weirdo that I am, I'm commemorating the CoVid19 lockdown by watching plague movies, and because I love you, dear reader, I'm writing them up for you, and I'll end the series with a nice best-of countdown!
Scoring:
Films that fail to hold my attention get a DNF (Did Not Finish) and no score (that would be unfair).
Films that hold my attention are scored on four dimensions: Frightening (Is it the kind of scary that builds up, and stays with you afterward?) Dread & anxiety get points here. Scary (Is it the kind of scary that makes you jump in your seat, or wish you'd eaten a smaller lunch?) Surprises and gross-outs get points here. Plausible (Does the plague, and people's response to it, seem realistic, as if it could possibly happen?) Awesome (Is it a good movie? Does it hit its marks?)
Each of these dimensions will be scored out of five.
Finally, for bonus demerits/points: "But wait, there's more!" stinger (Does the film end by hinting that the infection is on its way to a sequel new location?) That's tacky, and I take away points depending on the amount of cheesiness.
Coming Up in this Review: Antiviral (2012) Maggie (2015) 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) Pandemic (2016) Stephen King's The Stand (1994) 28 Days Later (2002) / 28 Weeks Later (2007) duology The Invasion (2007)
USA just had 3.2 million people file for unemployment in a week. USA also just blew past China to take the world lead in Covid 19/ ChinaVirus TrumpVirus infections.
Meanwhile, US politicians are starting to float the idea that maybe a few hundred thousand deaths is just the price you have to pay to keep the economy chugging. (Seriously, fuck those guys.) That idea -- the "herd immunity" idea Boris Johnson floated in the UK is inhumane, and anybody who promotes it should have to pick which 20% of their parents (or beloved elderly relatives, friends or mentors over 70) "gets" to die to save the economy, and then sit at their bedsides.
THIS IS YOUR FUCKING PLAN? Holy shit I'm mad.
But... something's gotta give, right? You can't just lock down for eighteen months.
A friend, who is a paramedic (and you think your job is stressful) asked me how I think South Korea flattened the CoronaVirus curve, so I wrote this for her. I figured I'd share it because hey, why not? These are thoughts I've had spread out over a number of Facebook comments and things, but seems like a good time to get them all in one place. There are places where I paint with a very broad brush here. Deal with it.
Hi [redacted awesome person's name], you have asked me to talk about how Korea flattened the curve, and which actions South Korea took that I think contributed to that. I'm doing this with voice to text, so forgive me if there are weird voice recognition errors.
First, let's be clear, I think South Korea is not out of the woods yet. South Korea's big climb in infections was mostly from one super spreader in a city called Daegu. She went to a mass church service, and declined to get tested for covid-19, and was just generally reckless. At one point 80% of all the covid-19 cases in South Korea could be traced directly to this one woman. Google “patient 31” to learn more about her if you want. The number of cases in Seoul has been pretty steady rather than climbing exponentially, but also not decreasing.
Feeling a little cooped up? Self-quarantine and voluntary isolation getting you down? Climbing the walls like a capillary action food-coloring and paper science experiment... gone wrong?
Well, self-isolation is getting to me, too. So I'm taking a short break from my CoVideo Plague Film Bonanza for a mini-side quest to mention movies about... isolation! Ever been locked in a room, not knowing when you'd get out? Ever reached the limits of what you could do in your confined space, but you don't know when it'll be OK to leave? Ever hear people say things like "We might have to do 18 months of social distancing until there's a vaccine" and thought "Oh crap. I'm losing my grip already after twenty days!" This one's for you (and me), before we all start seeing ants.
For all the weirdos like myself, who deal with the anxiety of living in a time of plague by watching plague films, maybe you also cope with isolation and quarantine by watching movies about isolation, confinement and claustrophobia. In case that's you, here are some films about isolation and claustrophobia. I'm not going to watch new films for this because it's only a sidequest to my Plague Film Bonanza, and be warned that things are a little spoilery, but while my discussion of the film might require me to reveal that there's a twist (in order to talk about whether it was well done), I'll try not to give away what the twist is, exactly. Here are a few social distancing films I've seen, and I welcome your suggestions for further viewing in the comments.
The Plague Film Bonanza has sprawled large enough to require a central control and table of contents, so I'll have the rules here, and links to each of the installments.
To Recap:
Weirdo that I am, I'm commemorating the CoVid19 lockdown by watching plague movies. Some people cope with stress and anxiety by rewatching The Princess Bride or Singin' In The Rain, but I do it by going dark. If you also deal with uncertainty by watching movies about other people in even more stressful situations, this here is for you!
Maybe you dealt with a coming lockdown by buying (or trying to buy) facemasks, hand sanitizer, and ungodly amounts of toilet paper, or adjusting weekend plans. Well, I went and found every movie about infectious diseases I could and have been watching them one by one. So if you're housebound anyway, why not pass the time scaring the crap out of yourself, right?
I'm writing mini-reviews of some classic, less-than-classic, and absolute garbage plague films, and because I love you, I'm writing them up for you, readers, and I'll end the series with a nice best-of countdown!
To sum up the ground rules:
Qualifying:
Rule 1: It has to be a narrative film. There might be some great plague television out there, but I have a kid who is apparently studying from home until he is forty: binging entire seasons of TV series' that are too scary to share with him is off the table. Documentaries would require an entirely different scoring system, so they're out, too. Most, but not all the films here are fiction, and I'm limiting the series to narrative films.
Rule 2: The film has to be about a plague or viral infection. That is, it must put significant attention on what the infectious agent is, how it spreads or works, and what can be done about the infection. If the response is "we need to hide from/kill all the zombies" (Dawn of the Dead) it's not really a plague film: it's a zombie or monster film. If the response is "we can beat this if we discover and exploit a weakness in how the virus spreads" (World War Z) then it's a plague film. Both are zombie films, but only one is a plague film. Another example: if the vial of plague pathogen in Mission: Impossible 2 were replaced with a computer chip, or a piece of microfilm, the rest of the film basically wouldn't change, so Mission: Impossible 2 is a MacGuffin chase, not really a plague film. There's a little wiggle room here, and I'll be making some calls. If that makes you mad, write your own blog series.
Theory of Scary Movies (context):
Films that hold my attention are scored on four dimensions, with one bonus category, but for my first two categories, I need to explain my theory of scary movies.
Because plague films are usually scary, I need to explain that there are two ways scary movies scare us. Think of Alfred Hitchcock's bomb theory: a bomb exploding under a table surprises the audience, but if the audience knows there's a bomb under the table and it doesn't explode, we get suspense. A surprise can be part of good storytelling, but it can also be a cheap trick. Suspense makes small, mundane details suddenly important or compelling.
Scares work this way, too. Some movies scare us by having a monster jump out of the closet. These are usually called jump-scares, and they're scary for five seconds, like the bomb under the table exploding. The new It remake films use this trick again and again. A good jump-scare comes from sound design, editing, and camera work. There's a craft to it, but it's simple setup and payoff. Make people think something is coming, and then defy expectations before delivering it in a way that manages to still surprise. Jump scares aren't the only kind of scare that's right out in front of the camera, and in the viewer's face. Jump-scares are the result of skillful sound design and editing. Scary images are a result of skillful design. Body horror (body parts, things getting cut off, melting skin, guts, pus, stuff happening to human bodies that isn't supposed to happen) is also right in the viewer's face, and it comes from good special effects and prop design. Gross-out horror (blood, vomit, pus, other body fluids) are an adjacent category. If the scare is right out on the surface, and the film makes me jump like a cat, shiver in fright at the creature's face, or retch with squick about the stuff that just came out of that guy's ear, I'm measuring this kind in my "Scary" category.
Like the bomb under the table that doesn't explode, other movies scare us by having a character suspect there's a monster in the closet, and find they're too afraid to open the door and check. Suddenly, that closet door is scary all by itself. We see the hero, afraid to look around the corner, and we don't even need to see what the monster looks like. A thump in the attic, a muffled sound in the cellar, and did that shadow just move? This creates anxiety. My favorite horror movies set an ominous tone, convincing me something bad is going to happen and let that dread build and build. The payoff, when it comes, is more satisfying because the film set it up so carefully and let my imagination do the rest of the work. Think of the films Paranormal Activity, The Others, or The Babadook. It doesn't even need to be outright horror: We Need to Talk About Kevin is a great example of this in the psychological thriller genre.The imagery isn't necessarily gory and if there are jump-scares, their purpose is to increase the ongoing sense of anxiety. This kind of scare sticks with you. Unlike the chill that's gone in five seconds, these movies have you checking your locks or changing your passwords a week after the film is over. I'm measuring this in my "Frightening" category. I personally prefer this type of scare, though the best scary movies (It Follows, The Thing, The Ring, A Quiet Place) do both.
The Scoring Categories The Failed Experiments:
Not all these films are going to be what we conventionally call "good films," but even bad films have ways to hold one's attention. If a film was so dull, poorly made, or predictable that I didn't watch it from beginning to end, and instead skipped to the "good parts," it gets a DNF (Did Not Finish). I tried, but even as I pretend zombie films are relevant to a global pandemic, I have enough integrity not to review a film I haven't seen all the way through.
The Categories: Each is graded out of five points. Frightening (Does it create that moody, ominous feeling of dread that builds up, and stays with you afterward?) Scary (Is it the kind of scary that makes you jump in your seat, or wish you'd eaten a smaller lunch? Surprises and gross-outs get points in this category.) Plausible (Does the plague, and people's response to it, seem realistic, as if it could possibly happen? If unrealistic, does the film follow its own rules, and unfold believably, granted the initial premise?) Awesome (Is it a good movie? Does it hit its marks? Are the scary parts scary, the sad parts sad, and the joyful parts joyful?)
Finally, for bonus demerits/points: "But wait, there's more!" stinger - does the film end by hinting that the infection is on its way to a sequel new location? You know...the montage where the contaminated water ends up at a bottling factory while ominous music plays, or the one infected cat escapes the exterminators and heads toward the Lincoln Tunnel and the mainland? Yah those are cheesy, and I will be docking points for them, depending on the amount of cheesiness.
By having two categories -- half the entire scoring -- on scariness, this system will over-rate scary movies and under-rate things like dramas or love stories. We'll discuss that as we get into the reviews.
It's unlikely that any film will get a 20/20 on this scale, because frightening, scary and plausible are usually a three-way trade-off: films that make me jump like a cat usually don't also make me fear door handles, and a film that does both probably asks for a big suspension of disbelief in the plausibility category.
Weirdo that I am, I'm commemorating the CoVid19 lockdown by watching plague movies, and because I love you, dear reader, I'm writing them up for you, and I'll end the series with a nice best-of countdown!
Scoring:
Films that fail to hold my attention get a DNF (Did Not Finish) and no score (that would be unfair).
Films that hold my attention are scored on four dimensions: Frightening (Is it the kind of scary that builds up, and stays with you afterward?) Dread & anxiety get points here. Scary (Is it the kind of scary that makes you jump in your seat, or wish you'd eaten a smaller lunch?) Surprises and gross-outs get points here. Plausible (Does the plague, and people's response to it, seem realistic, as if it could possibly happen?) Awesome (Is it a good movie? Does it hit its marks?)
Each of these dimensions will be scored out of five.
Finally, for bonus demerits/points: "But wait, there's more!" stinger (Does the film end by hinting that the infection is on its way to a sequel new location?) That's tacky, and I take away points depending on the amount of cheesiness.
Weirdo that I am, I'm commemorating the CoVid19 lockdown by watching plague movies, and because I love you, dear reader, I'm writing them up for you, and I'll end the series with a nice best-of countdown!
Scoring:
Films that fail to hold my attention get a DNF (Did Not Finish) and no score (that would be unfair).
Films that hold my attention are scored on four dimensions: Frightening (Is it the kind of scary that builds up, and stays with you afterward?) Dread & anxiety get points here. Scary (Is it the kind of scary that makes you jump in your seat, or wish you'd eaten a smaller lunch?) Surprises and gross-outs get points here. Plausible (Does the plague, and people's response to it, seem realistic, as if it could possibly happen?) Awesome (Is it a good movie? Does it hit its marks?)
Each of these dimensions will be scored out of five.
Finally, for bonus demerits/points: "But wait, there's more!" stinger (Does the film end by hinting that the infection is on its way to a sequel new location?) That's tacky, and I take away points depending on the amount of cheesiness.
Coming Up in this Post: 감기 (The Flu) (2013) Black Death (2010) Pontypool (2008) Extinction: The GMO Chronicles (2011) 괴물 (The Host) (2006) Viral (2016) The Girl With All the Gifts (2016)
Well I'm a bit weird, I guess. While most people respond to an epidemic scare like CoViD 19 by buying facemasks and hand sanitizer, and adjusting their weekend plans, I went and found every movie about infectious diseases I could and have been watching them one by one. If you're housebound anyway, why not pass the time scaring the crap out of yourself, right?
Now, I'm writing mini-reviews of some classic, less-than-classic, and absolute garbage plague films, and after the summaries, I'll finish off with a big ol' countdown from worst to best... so stay tuned!
Also, if you have a suggestion for a film I should include, please mention it in the comments!
Now not every film I mention will get a score. A few films just couldn't hold my attention all the way through. If a film was so dull, poorly made, or cliched I ended up skipping to the "good parts" it gets DNF (Did Not Finish). I tried. Also, some films that seem to be plague films actually aren't. I'll use some discretion in the margins here, but sometimes a film that seems to be about a plague actually isn't. For example: if the vial of plague in Mission: Impossible 2 were replaced with a computer chip, or a piece of microfilm, the rest of the film basically wouldn't change. Mission: Impossible 2 is a MacGuffin chase, not really a plague film. A lot of the plot of World War Z is about Brad Pitt trying to figure out how the zombie virus works, and that focus of attention makes it a plague film, while Dawn Of The Dead is more about people escaping zombies and less about the workings of the virus, so it's off the list.
A good pestilence film is scary, but any connoisseur of scary films can tell you there are two kinds of scare. One is like oatmeal: it sticks to your ribs, and hours later you're still full. Days after a scare like this, you're still checking the closet, adding locks to your doors, and changing your passwords. These scares are often a slow burn, and they spend a long time building that feeling of dread before finally paying off and messing you up. It Follows, Fulci's Zombi, Paranormal Activity and We Need to Talk About Kevin are like this. The other type of scare, the jump scare, is like wasabi: it sure is intense, but five seconds later, its impact has dissipated entirely. For sudden noises and things jumping out of the closet, films like Drag Me To Hell, It2017, The Grudge, Final Destination and most slasher movies are examples. The best scary movies do both (The Shining, The Thing, The Ring, It Follows, A Quiet Place). Personally, I prefer the first type, but I'm easy. A scare is a scare.
Scoring: Of course I need a scoring system. Frightening (How scary is it the first way - the ominous, the creepy, the "I'm never leaving the house without hand sanitizer again" way?) (Scored out of five) Scary (How scary is it the second way? Is it startling, chilling, or gross?) (Scored out of five) Plausible (Does the film make me believe this could actually happen? Does it make sense and at least have some modicum of logic? Does it follow its own rules, and unfold believably within its premise?) (Scored out of five) Awesome (Is the movie awesome? Like, is it an actually a good movie? Do the payoffs pay off? Are the scary bits scary and the sad bits sad?) (Scored out of five)
Does it end with a cheesy "but wait, there's more!" stinger? (negative one or two points, depending on the cheesiness)
It's unlikely that any film will get a 20/20 on this scale, because frightening and scary are generally a trade-off: films that make me jump like a cat usually don't also make me fear door handles.
In this review: Carriers (2009) Deranged (연가시) (2012) Patient Zero (2018) Outbreak (1995) The Bay (2012) Perfect Sense (2011)
Mitt Romney was the first US senator ever to vote to convict a president of his own party in an impeachment trial.
And... there's been a lot of praise for him. Here's Stephen Colbert, for one example.
And for the record, here's Mitt Romney's speech about why he would vote to impeach on one of the articles of impeachment. He talks about posterity and his vow before god.
I'm not interested here in re-litigating Trump's guilt... it seems pretty clear the Republican Party has decided that he's guilty but it doesn't matter, because they have the power to make it not matter. This is a pretty damn dark time for US democracy, and from there, for the world, as over the last century or more USA has positioned itself as the city on a hill for democratic process and principle, and is now telling everyone who looked to that city on a hill, "Naw. We said rule of law matters, but it doesn't. There's just power now, and who has it." This will speed along the end of America's half-century of post-WWII hegemony faster than anything could, short of catastrophic war or economic collapse. It's amazing watching a country blow off whatever moral capital it had previously claimed so enthusiastically.
That said... I'm not entirely persuaded by Mitt Romney's vote, either, and here's why:
I made a weird connection a while ago. Bear with me.
Mr Rogers is back in the zeitgeist these days, with an upcoming film where Tom Hanks plays him, and a documentary about the real man coming out last year. When the trailer for "Won't You Be My Neighbor" came out, a snippet of music caught my ear.
Catch it at 1:05.
Those horns rang a bell for me, thanks to a song from a CD I once had recommended to me by the guy at a Hongdae music shop. It was an album called Whiskey by Jay Jay Johanson. It was alright: my clearest memory of it was one of my coworkers viscerally hating it. But a song on it titled "I'm Older Now" sampled the song where that beautiful bit of horns first appeared, which is why I recognized it.
I ran in to a hiccup at bedtime. It wasn’t actually the first time I’ve run into this particular hiccup, but it got me thinking.
Almost every night, I read to my son. It’s great, for all the usual reasons. He gets to discover characters and worlds I loved as a kid, or we discover wonderful new ones. He hears the stories that helped teach me things about bravery, honesty, loyalty, determination, or silliness. We’ve heard from some titans of children’s literature: Roald Dahl is wonderful to read out loud. C.S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles are better than I remember them: the moral choices children make in his stories are valuable discussion starters for father-son talks about responsibility, consequences, kindness, and listening to your conscience.
But then… at bedtime… there are passages like this.
Cover art from the version I read as a kid.
Turbans and scimitars. Source
From The Horse and His Boy:
"This boy is manifestly no son of yours, for your cheek is as dark as mine but the boy is fair and white like the accursed but beautiful barbarians who inhabit the remote North [meaning Narnia].” (Chapter 1) C. S. Lewis. The Horse and his Boy (Kindle Locations 79-80). HarperCollins. HOLD ON! So... C.S. Lewis believes dark people are ugly? Am I reading this right?
"The next thing was that these men were not the fair-haired men of Narnia: they were dark, bearded men from Calormen, that great and cruel country that lies beyond Archenland across the desert to the south." C. S. Lewis. Last Battle (Kindle Locations 263-264). San Val, Incorporated.
Yes, the Calormenes, from Calormen, across the desert south of Narnia, worship the cruel god Tash (with hints of human sacrifice). They feature in The Last Battle and The Horse and His Boy and they are clearly coded as Muslims: they are dark-faced, wear turbans, and wield scimitars. They are also described as cruel and exploitative. Oh... and some Dwarves mock them by calling them "Darkie.” And in case you thought you could omit a few details and remove the racial coding... they're drawn on the cover of the version I read as a kid. No getting around it.
The Silver Chair's treatment of the character Jill Pole in particular falls into many old tropes about what girls are and aren't, can and can't do.
Roald Dahl, whom we’d been reading before reading Narnia, had this buried in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator:
'It is very difficult to phone people in China, Mr President,' said the Postmaster General. 'The country's so full of Wings and Wongs, every time you wing you get the wong number.' (Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (Kindle Locations 302-303).
When they do call someone in China... their names are Chu-On-Dat and How-Yu-Bin, and they address the president as Mr. Plesident. Yeah. Roald Dahl went there. Just skip Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, folks. As sequel letdowns go, it gives Jaws: The Revenge and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a run for their money.
Gillette ruffled some feathers last week with an ad about masculinity, pointing out things that happen, like bullying, casual violence, and casual sexism - some obviously shitty things - suggesting that the excuse, "Boys will be boys" is not a good excuse, and encouraging men to 1. be less shitty, and 2. encourage other men to be less shitty, and 3. stop making excuses for shitty behavior by other men and boys. It ends with close-ups of some kids watching their dads stop other men and boys from being shitty, pointing out today's men are models for the men of the future, so our behavior teaches our kids to be shitty, or not shitty.
It has been hotly discussed in a number of places I frequent online, so I thought I'd put my thoughts in one place.
The ad itself... viewed on its own terms, without having it framed by someone who wants to rant about "SJWs" and the North American culture wars, or by someone who wants to rant about "Toxic masculinity"... isn't that controversial, really.
It's true that people make excuses for boys and men's bad behavior. It's true that some boys and men do shitty things. Among the behaviors identified, it's not controversial to identify these behaviors as shitty:
Groping women
Catcalling
Interrupting women
Patronizing or stealing ideas of female colleagues
Bullying smaller or weaker people with physical violence or verbal harassment
Treating women like trophies or toys
If someone is mad about the Gillette ad because they think the above behaviors shouldn't be criticized, they have much bigger problems than a men's grooming company telling them how to be decent human beings (most urgent: they aren't decent human beings).
Only slightly less slam-dunk obvious is the ad's emphasis on the excuse made for bad behavior: "Boys will be boys" (which is repeated by a whole lineup of men: this is pretty emphatic). I would guess that a lot of people who regularly say "Boys will be boys" will be surprised to hear it pointed out as troublesome. The ad posits a better response for men's shitty behavior than excuses: men stepping in to stop the shittiness.
But remove this from the "somebody is telling men how to behave" pearl-clutching, and again, it's not very controversial. Given a choice, I think most people would say that it's better to stop bad behavior than to make excuses for it.
Anyone disputing 1. that the behaviors above are bad, and 2. that correcting them is better than making excuses for them, definitely carries the burden of proof.
The most common complaint I've heard about the ad is that it's somehow claiming that ALL men are shitty... yet the ad clearly ALSO shows men stopping all the behaviors pointed out (except the man interrupting his female colleague while putting hand on her shoulder and restating her idea in his own words - he seems to get away with it).
First of all, has the world ever breathed a bigger sigh of relief simply because "Oh good. He didn't fuck it up"? Recency bias being what it is, probably, but I can't think of when.
I've followed a lot of the hot takes on Twitter, only to have trouble finding them back again, but they basically boil down to kind of Robert E Kelly's "This is a bad idea" take here, all in one place on the thread reader app. Click on the tweets to read the whole thread.
also here on Twitter:
Please stop saying Trump-Kim was a success bc at least we’re talking; symbolism is important; last year was so much worse; and so on. Those are preposterously low thresholds for a leader-level summit. These are things you say after some diplomats meet at UN. The N Koreans /1
Here's an alternative: y'all are freaking out that the ceremonial first pitch did not hit the strike zone. At least wait till the third inning is over before going all in with your hot takes. https://t.co/SdVi6IT0Ck
Going back to my previous post on this, where I talked about what would be a positive sign of substantive change, and what would mostly be window-dressing, most of what happened at the summit was on Tier one: could be window-dressing. We will need to wait and see what is borne out in ground-level negotiations before we can say whether this process was a success.
A lot of this stuff is cut-pasted, mix-and-matched, or snatched from the ether that is Twitter: it's great for getting bite-sized insights, but really hard to find back a comment read one time, so parts of this post will be combinations of things other people have said, but which I can't find back. John Delury, Sino NK, Jonathan Cheng, Robert Kelly and Ask A Korean's twitter feeds have been covering this stuff in detail, so do take a moment and spend time clicking the links they share, and if anything here was in a tweet you saw, please leave a link so I can attribute it properly.
News outlets reported that North and South Korea are working on officially ending the Korean War, a war fought from 1950-1953, but which never moved beyond an armistice to an actual peace treaty or normalized diplomatic relations. After announcements of planning a summit, and indications that denuclearization is on the table, Kim Jong-un's visit to China, and Mike Pompeo's visit to North Korea, it is starting to look like the ducks are getting in a row for some actual, substantive progress in the area, something I have not suspected to be possible pretty much since I came to South Korea.
While we try to keep our hopes guarded at Roboseyo whenever it could just be that Kim Jong-un opened a new box of girl scout cookies and "All The Single Ladies" came on the radio at the same time, there are indeed indications that this is not your run-of-the-mill repeat of North Korea's patented "Global Media Attention Maximizing Friendly/Unfriendly Yo-yo Diplomacy" actTM. Let's go through some of them, and let's read/write quick, before everything goes squirrelly again.
North Korea's Strongest Position Ever
First of all, let's start off with the notion that getting together for the Pyeongchang Olympics laid some groundwork for this.
Kendrick Lamar's album Damn. won the Pulitzer freaking Prize! I have a few thoughts.
First of all, in a world where Bob Dylan can win the Nobel Prize in Literature, anything can happen, so why the heck not a Pulitzer for a Hip-Hop album?
Second: I am much happier at Kendrick Lamar winning a Pulitzer than I was about Dylan's Nobel Prize. The Nobel Committee claimed they were looking outside the conventional "box" of literature, which is cool I guess. It is admirable if a committee as prestigious as the Nobel committee sometimes tries to draw attention toward outsiders -- people living away from the world's cultural centers, using languages that don't hold global power and status. But Bob Dylan is the most insider outsider you could possibly find for a literature prize: he's a rich and famous American rock star who writes in English who's already had awards, tributes and accolades heaped upon him since the freaking sixties. Heck, a white savior even used him to reach inner-city black kids in a '90s inspirational teachers' movie once. Really, folk music, singer-songwriter music, and white songwriters who peaked in the sixties have had more than their share of kudos already, and worst of all, Dylan's lyrics sound cool, but Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen's poetry look better on the page. One in fifty of Dylan's songs is a perfectly written gem, but twenty of fifty sound like they could have been much improved by a second, third or twelfth draft, and by cutting the fourth or fifth verses, and rephrasing a few lines in the bridge. Leonard Cohen never sang a verse whose lyrics seemed to need a once-over to tighten the screws, so I wasn't inspired by Bob Dylan's Nobel. But you know: "Is songwriting literature? So outsider! Such edgy! Many nice work, Nobel!" Moreover, music genres and artists coming out of black culture have been historically under-appreciated and under-represented in media coverage, acclaim, respect and awards, more so as the awards get more prestigious, so giving the Pulitzer to a black artist making black music when almost every other winner of the Pulitzer for music has been a white person making white music...that's cool. Let us hope that balance continues correcting.
The Pyeongchang Olympics are here! Some of my friends are really excited about this, so of course I take it as my Roboseyoly duty to throw some cold water on the proceedings. We have a lot of cold water around the house right now, because our laundry room's pipes have been frozen for literally three weeks! Before running out to the coin laundry to ensure I have underpants for the next week (rueing that cancelled trip to Hawaii more and more), I'd like to say a few things about the Pyeongchang Olympics.
Part One: Tempering Expectations
I had intended to write this about two or three years ago, but never really got around to it, which means I am now Johnny-come-lately instead of being stylishly ahead of the curve, but I've been telling whichever friends would listen that the Pyeongchang Olympics are going to be a letdown pretty much since they were awarded.
I am in the process of writing my longer, less fun take on why the Pyeongchang Olympics will be a letdown, but one thing I'm looking forward to is... the foreign media frenzy!
Yes, foreign media will be helicoptering into South Korea in droves to cover the Pyeongchang games, and we get the pleasure of scads and scads of people writing about Korea who don't actually know much about Korea!
Blogger Ask A Korean! has finally reached the much-awaited pinnacle of his "Top 50 Most Influential K-pop Artists" list.
I've engaged with this list a few times, recently disputing his definition of K-Pop for (glances around shyly) nearly my only blog post last year. But contrarian as I may be, I love what he's doing with that list, and it's helped me discover a handful of favorite Korean artists.
He has reached #1, and the ultimate Korean musician is a favorite of mine: Shin Joong-hyun (or Shin Jung-hyeon, both transliterations of 신중현). Go read his write-up. Tell him I sent you.
So for readers who are interested in knowing more about the amazing Shin Joong-hyeon, here are some links!
For readers who would like to listen to more of his music, indie archivist label "Light in the Attic Records" compiled and remastered a great one disc compilation of some of Shin's best music. It includes the best versions of several of his defining songs, though it's short on songs performed by Kim Chuja, one of Shin's most notable collaborators.
Light In The Attic also released perhaps the single best album Shin wrote and produced: "Now" by Kim Jungmi. The story goes that due to being blacklisted, he couldn't find a venue to perform at or musicians to work with him, except Kim Jungmi, and together they cut an album that is fantastic, top to bottom. The opening track, "Haenim" or "The Sun" is one of my favorite recordings, full stop (see below).
For more Shin Joong-hyun goodness, here are a couple of blog posts I wrote about him.
The Korean's entire list is here, and it's full of great things and worthy luminaries. Of course there are a few singers I think are too high, or too low, and fans could make their cases energetically (though eyes will be rolled at anyone placing a group that debuted since 2010 in the top ten). The list started before Kangnam Style, so Psy doesn't figure. Some might argue to rearrange some of the #4-10 places, and many might switch #1 and #2, but I think The Korean made the right call here in the end.
Finally, if you've read this far, you deserve goodies:
When I was writing that documentary linked above for TBS Radio, I listened to as much Shin Joong-hyun as I could get my hands on (which was quite a bit: he has a couple of anthologies, and scads of stuff on Youtube if you are willing to wade through a few four hour long collection-all-in-one-place videos.
Basically, the Light In The Attic compilation is great, but left me wanting more. A legend of Shin's stature deserves more than one disk! So I combed through all that music I was listening to, and cobbled together a double CD that stretches its legs a bit.
As for goals, I wanted my two disc set to accomplish a few things:
1. Find a good version of each of the songs that comprise the Shin Joong-hyun canon (that is: the tracks that keep showing up on anthology after anthology, many of which have become standards, covered by tons of artists. These are his greatest hits and most recognizable).
2. Feature the variety of singers he worked with (so other than Jang Hyun and Kim Chuja, his most important singers, who had no cap, and Kim Jungmi and Lee Junghwa, who got three, no vocalist got more than two tracks)
3. Show off his skill as a songwriter and producer: his songs are extremely well composed and arranged, tight and concise examples of pop songwriting as a form. For such a brilliantly talented musician, he shows a lot of restraint in only busting out his guitar chops when it makes the song better)
4. Work as a serviceable companion to the Light in the Attic one-disc compilation, (this meant that, for example, where a great version of one of Shin's essential songs existed (often sung by Jang Hyun or one of Shin's top collaborators) on the LITA collection, I'd find a version from a less-often-mentioned singer for my collection, which let me showcase more different artists (see #2) (Park In Soo's version of 봄비 [Spring Rain] is by far the most famous, and it's on LITA, so I got to put my personal favorite version, by 이정화, on my playlist, for example), or songs from the major artists that were a little less famous, because their big ones (이정화's 싫어, and Bunny Girls' 하필 그사람 for example) were already covered on LITA (so I got to put Lee's 꽃잎 and Bunny Girls' 우주여행 on mine)... but my playlist also had to...
5. Stand alone, too. That means where possible, I avoided crossover with the LITA disc, but where LITA had the slam-dunk definitive version of one of Shin's absolutely essential songs (this happened three times), I did double up. There are only a small handful of Shin's essential songs that Shin recorded with many artists, or are frequently anthologized, that I didn't include here. (미련 and 석양 are two that LITA had, while 늦기전에 was the only one I couldn't find space for on my two-disk either, because Kim Chuja only got one torch song, and 님은 먼것에 is more important, in my opinion.)
6. Repeat songs as little as possible (this was a problem with some of the other Shin Joong-hyun box sets and anthologies: he has a group of his best songs, and recorded them each with a number of different artists, which is interesting, but too much for a two disc set.) Only Mi-in, and Beautiful Rivers and Mountains, Shin's two most indelible songs, got more than one version.
And finally
7. Show the scope of his talent as a musician, songwriter, collaborator, producer, and inspiration. Inspiration is why I included a cover of his song by Kopchangjeongol, a tribute band formed by one of the Japanese collectors whose interest revived interest in Shin in the late 1990 (also considered: Jang Gi-ha collaborators The Mimi Sisters, covering one of Shin's strangest songs), and one track from the Shin Joong-hyun tribute album made by Korean musicians (the heavy version of Mi-in).
The first disc is more focused on his ability as a songwriter and producer: these songs are tight, concise, well-arranged and varied. A lot of them are hits, or have lived on as standards. You'll even spot a few of them covered in the soundtrack for the K-drama "Signal"
The second disc is more focused on his versatility and musicianship: some more interesting or unusual arrangements are here (listen especially to 우주여행 - "Space Journey" which sounds cosmic), some funny little songs (나팔바지 - Bell Bottom Pants) as well as some of the longer songs where he really cuts loose as a heavy guitar-rock soloist (the heavy version of In A Kadda Da Vida, Beautiful Rivers and Mountains, and the heavy version of Mi-in (The Beauty) are here).
In my opinion, the measure of a songwriter is that their songs can be covered: new artists bring something new to the song, or reveal interesting facets that hadn't been discovered yet by other performers. Think of the jazz standards, or artists like Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, or Carol King, whose songs have done very well for other artists. The Beatles are covered a ton, because the songs are well built and have good bones. On the other hand, the measure of a musician is that there is something inimitable in their performance of a song: nobody sings "Respect" because it's impossible to live up to Aretha Franklin's version. Every version of "All Along the Watchtower" is measured against Jimi Hendrix (and comes up short). You don't come across many Guns'n'Roses covers, because who can sing like Axl? It is amazing to me that Shin Joong-hyun has delivered both types of songs in his career: as a songwriter, 봄비, 나는 너를, 미련, 님은 먼곳에, 명동 거리/검은 머리, 비속에 여인 and even 아름다운 강산 (copy/paste and look up the different versions on Youtube) are all standard repertoire songs covered by a bunch of different artists, but then, nobody even comes close to his versions of 미인, and his version of In-A-Kadda-Da-Vida is unbelievable. Even a song of his that has been covered time and time again, the version where Shin opens it with a solo is (in my opinion) the definitive version of 떠나야할 그 사람.
Also, seriously, readers: if you like this stuff, go find a place where you can spend some money on Shin Joong-hyun's music. Buy the Light In The Attic set, or Now, or one of his other albums. He has some box sets, too, if you have his main stuff and want deep cuts. It's good stuff, and he deserves your royalties.
****
Thinking about the things I learned about Shin Joong-hyun, who had globe-spanning talent, but never became a global star, it simply strikes me how many different things have to go right for someone to become a global star.
If US hadn't had military bases in Korea, providing income and inspiration for Shin to explore rock and soul music, he might never have developed as a musician.
According to one story I heard, Shin was actually invited to the US by an American record company interested in his talent... but his manager hid the invitation from him for a year, lest his cash-cow leave the country. That could have been his "Jimi Hendrix goes to England" moment... but it wasn't.
Also, if timing had worked out a little differently, he wouldn't have become the Korea legend he is at all: he'd signed a contract and taken the payment to travel to Vietnam and perform for American troops there, when word came to his manager that The Pearl Sisters' song "Nima" was his first real hit, and he decided to wiggle out of his contract and stay in Korea to keep trying as a producer and songwriter. A few days one way or the other and he would not have been in Korea at all to become what he became for Korean music.
Shin's singers kept leaving him as soon as they got famous. He simply never found the right muse or collaborator, the way Keith Richards found Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page found Robert Plant, or U2 got together thanks to an ad on a high school bulletin board. We could speculate on reasons why his groups never stayed together, but the fact is he never had a band lineup together for longer than a few years, and every new vocalist meant the old songs and arrangements might not fit.
Maybe if he'd been a bit better of a vocalist himself, he wouldn't have needed that, or if he'd done things a little differently whilst collaborating, or found a vocalist with the right temperament, one of his singers would have stuck around to be his Mick Jagger... who knows? But the fact is, he had to keep starting from scratch.
If he'd just recorded a song kissing President Park Chung-hee's ass that one time, the entire narrative of Korean rock music could have been completely different, and the (great though they were) Korean singers of the early 80s could have been starting from a much more interesting place than from scratch. I mean... (looks around nervously) say what you want about artistic integrity (looks around nervously again) ...given the situation at the time, he had to know what the fallout of that choice would be, right?
I mean, he got cut off just as he was peaking as a recording artist and producer, truncating his "Mega Producer, Taste-Maker" phase (imagine JYP or Lee Soo-man if they like, rocked, or ... a hard rock Quincy Jones, or Phil Spector with more guitar and without criminal charges), where he could have steered the course of Korean music for decades. We got a shadow his knack for starmaking in the '80s, boosting In Sooni and Kim WanSeon, but way less than we would have if he hadn't been banished to the doghouse for half a decade, while pop music moved on without him. He might now be doing his "Sir Paul McCartney tour" instead of being the "Hey why doesn't everybody know about this Korean guy? He's really good!" guy.
Of all the artists on my playlists, Shin Joong-hyun stands as the most tantalizing, both for the amazing stuff he created, and for the sheer scope of the woulda-coulda-shouldas of his career. Imagine if Brian Wilson were a little more mentally stable. And could rip a guitar riff like Keith Richards. Imagine if Jimi Hendrix were also a producer and starmaker on par with Berry Gordy Jr.. Imagine if Neil Young could also lay down a solo with the power of Jimmy Page, and also spring a dozen other popstars as a producer. What he did was enough to peg him as the #1 most influential K-pop musician in Korean music history. Who knows what Shin Joong-hyun could have been if things had broken right for him instead of always going sideways!
