In the Herald Twice this Week, and Hats off to Ben, Andrea, and Dann

I'm in the Korea Herald twice this week: on Wednesday, talking about 2S2, the expat get-together. You can come, too - at 2pm in the Twosome Place coffee shop next to exit 1 of Anguk subway station, near Insadong.

Dress warmly because we're going to be outdoors, watching the Snowboarding competition/festival in Gwanghwamun Plaza. You can also check out the 2S2 blog, or see what else I've written about it at Roboseyo. I've had interest from a few people about starting new 2S2 pockets in other areas, so if you're thinking about it, too, please drop me a line.

Next: also in the Herald, I put in a plug for the Korean International Salsa Social - KISS in today's Herald. You can read about it here. It's a good time to get involved in the community: they're having a party tomorrow in Itaewon!

Finally, and here's the biggie:

Hats off to Dann Gaymer, Ben Wagner, Andrea Vandom, et al, for appearing on CBC Radio, probably Canada's most respectable news organization - "BBC of Canada" if you will -- sometimes called the Canadian news mecca. They're on there talking about Anti-English Spectrum's targeting of English teachers, and the visa requirements, and all that jazz. I just listened to the feature, and it's quite well done, and each of them explain themselves well.

You can check it out here. This is great, and a big step up from the somewhat sloppy report that was in the Canadian National Post earlier this week.

Good work, all... and a special nod must also go to Matt from Popular Gusts, who wasn't interviewed, but whose work publishing and spreading news about Anti-English Spectrum has been, in my opinion, pivotal in building the momentum that is now leading to this kind of coverage in the international media. The next question is how much international embarrassment is required before decision-makers start getting stuff done -- the tree isn't just falling in the forest anymore, thanks. But for now: Cheers all around! I owe each of you a beer or a latte, next time we meet.

Three Cheers For Ajumma!

Ajumma, the most irrepressible sector of Korean society, is finally, finally refusing to be repressed in North Korea.

Ajummas, the ones who were at the vanguard of forming the black market of goods for sale which saved the lives of many North Koreans when the state, and Kim Jong-Il's porky evilness failed to provide food for most people, are now leading the defiant movement against Kim Jong-il's vicious plan to deprive as many of his people as possible of the money they'd earned on that black market, just as winter approached.

It seems that Kim Jong-il would rather rule a country of 3 million docile people willing to accept being hand-fed, than a country of 15 million people who can fend for themselves. The difference between those numbers? Let'em starve this winter.

Read more about the ajummovement here.

Kim Jong-il man is the most evil thing I can imagine. Anybody who doesn't recognize that just doesn't get it.

Frankly, Afghanistan nothing: Kim Jong-il's actions in North Korea are, in my opinion, the greatest repudiation of Ban Ki-moon and the UN's effectiveness is how complacent they have been about the systematic starvation of North Korea's people, and the egregious ways he's been slowly robbing his people of any dignity they might have had.

I hope they rise, and I hope they get him. East-Asia'll be a mess for a while in the aftermath, but I can't believe how Kim Jong-il keep manages to top himself, evil-wise.

2S2 on Saturday December 12: Dress Warmly

Dress warmly on Saturday, dear readers. 2S2 is meeting, as usual, at 2pm, on the Second Saturday of the month, in the usual place: at the Twosome Place to the right of exit 1, Anguk Station.

From there, we're going to head down to Gwanghwamun Plaza, where there's this wild, crazy, awesome Snowboarding competition and festival all weekend, and we'll take part in the festivities. Come join us! But dress warmly. It's December, and the festival's outdoors.

So what is 2S2? Well, now it has a blog and a facebook group... nothing exists anymore unless it has a blog and a facebook group, does it?

You can read more about what it is, and what we're trying to accomplish, here, or here.

Wolfhound-inspired: more on Wolves

Dear readers:

Now that Wolfhound Pub has redeemed itself, now that I'm as full as a coffee mug with Wolf-love, it seems a good time to share a little more about wolves... and then tell you about the new occupant of my dog-house.

First: on the wolf-love side: gotta tell you, now that I've seen pretty much every great, good, and even OK Zombie movie, the pool-ball scene in "Zombie Strippers" made it pretty clear to me that I'd hit the bottom of the barrel, as Zombie films go. (Don't worry. I didn't watch the whole thing. The whole "Give-you-a-lap-dance-then-eat-you" thing was just too many levels of exploitation at once, and it was witless and charmless and really twelve kinds of not fun and not cool -- couldn't even enjoy it in the "so bad it's good" way: it was just "so bad it's, um, really bad") So I thought I'd try out another monster movie genre: Vampires were too obvious, what with the film industry's Robert Pattinson-based Twigasm, so I checked out a few wolfmannish movies.



Basically: 1. wolfman is the red-headed stepchild of iconic movie monsters: surprisingly few really good movies, and even the "good" ones were surprisingly weak
2. this is partially explained by the nature of lycanfolk: only turning into a wolf for three nights a month makes it hard to build dramatic tension into a powerful climax -- either the beginning of the movie's all long and slow, just for a single riveting (hopefully) scene once the moon finally rolls around (cf: An American Werewolf in London), or the whole story happens in a very short timeframe, which can make for great action, but not much character development.
3. The tawdriness of the "man in a wolf suit" effects and costuming of most of these werewolf movies. Especially after the gleeful gore of even 1980s zombie movies, the wolfman effects left me in the cold, for the most part. Wolf costumes, people in wolf suits, just aren't graceful or impressive-looking enough to catch my attention. So here's the rundown of my brief flirtation with werewolf movies, before I decided "Hey. It's December. Let's get christmassy and watch feel-good movies instead."



Saw: Dog Soldiers - excellent British take on Wolfman. Man in suit monsters were the weak point - lame silhouettes - but whenever the wolves WEREN'T onscreen, great action sequences, good setup (British special forces vs. werewolves), etc..
Ginger Snaps - top 3, more psychological than action-based, especially with the subtext of the sisterhood theme, along with the coming of age confusion. Werewolfism becomes an interesting stand-in for teen anxieties about menstruation.
Blood & Chocolate - possibly the best one of the lot, the two leads were strong, and the movie's best strength was actually using wolves for the transformations. Had a tone and mysical feeling the others lacked, and created a real feeling of a wolf pack that was intriguing.
An American Werewolf in London: weak sauce. Especially the early '80s effects, which were not sophisticated enough for my CG-spoiled eye, but not primitive enough (see '60s movies) to be fun in a campy way. A lot of lists had this as one of the top werewolf films, which is a big part of why I didn't get deeper into the genre.

Still need to see: Heard good things about The Howling, and Wolf, starring Jack Nicholson. Jack could read the phonebook and still be compelling and watchable, so I'll at least give it a try. That may be it for my foray into werewolf films, unless somebody tells me about another I really need to see. Warning: any mention of Underworld or Van Helsing will lead to a complete loss of credibility. And if I need to mention ditto for Twilight, why am I even talking to you?



For the record: the best movies I saw during the zombie kick:

Transcends the Genre: Army of Darkness

1. Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1979) (Straight up zombie terror)
2. Zombieland (witty, genre-savvy and self-referential - the best postmodern zombie film)
3. Night of the Living Dead (the original)
4. Dawn of the Dead (original)
5. Cemetery Man (a zombie art film starring Rupert Everett. I kid you not)
6. 28 Days Later (if it qualifies as a Zombie film; purists say it doesn't)
7. Dead Snow (best climactic zombie-slaying action sequence outside of Zombieland. Plus: Nazi Zombies!)
8. Shawn of the Dead (Zombieland's pacing was better; less action than Shawn)
9. Dawn of the Dead (the remake: running zombies don't do it for me as much as for others)
10. Day of the Dead (go Bub!)

hurt to leave out: "Evil" - a fun Greek zombie film, and "Dead Alive" - the Transformers 2 of Zombie films - so over-the-top goes it over, folds back on itself, and goes back over again, as if Zombie films were a splatter contest. Plus: the lawnmower scene, and the most unkillable zombies in the whole genre) The other top contender in the splatter contest: Planet Terror

And: Campy good: Flight of the Living Dead
Campy bad: all the Return of the Living Dead movies.

I Love the Wolfhound Forever

A while ago I had a gripe about the Wolfhound Pub in Itaewon - I even wrote a letter to them on my blog (see here) -- here was my gripe, to sum up:

Dear Wolfhound: Please either...
1. serve your coffee in a smaller mug, so that I don't feel ripped off by getting a coffee mug that's 40% full
2. fill your flurbing coffee mugs to the top, or at least near the top
3. charge less than three thousand won for four mouthfuls of coffee, when down the street, Rocky Mountain Tavern gives free coffee refills with all their breakfasts, and Starbucks gives nearly a PINT of coffee for a tiny bit more than the price of your tiny coffee puddle.

I ended off the letter with this:

it wouldn't take much to fix this problem. Just do it, and I'll love you forever.

Well, dear readers, I just got an e-mail from Wolfhound, and I hope they don't mind if I share it with you:

So, in response, I shall keep my promise to love them forever.

Dear readers, let me tell you about The Wolfhound Pub: (btw: this is a completely unpaid, message; I have not, and do not plan to benefit from writing this financially or in any other way; I'm writing this of my own volition and everything)

When I hanker for Fish'n'Chips, there's really only one place to go in Seoul:

Wolfhound Pub, which not only serves what are the best fish'n'chips I've had in Seoul, but which serves them up two for one on Tuesdays. In case you're a shark.

Seoul Eats just published their menu: go look.

Zenkimchi and Seoul Eats have gushed on about their burgers already, so I'm going to tell you about my own favorites:

1. the Irish Stew, which is nice
2. even more so: the beef and mushroom pie, which I like so much that I want to write it in all caps. Or at least italics.

It's a beef and mushroom stew with a flaky pastry over the top, which almost bursts with hot air when you poke it with a fork, and then deflates slowly into the stew.

Here's how it looks from the outside



and here's how it looks once you poke through that lovely pastry:

and ooh, dear readers, it is so good.

Here's the toad in the hole


The breakfast is good, and looking better these days, when a few of the former standout western breakfasts Really Muffed Theirs. So get on over there for your hangover brunch, or your British pub food, folks. The irish stew, the shepherd's pie, the fish'n'chips, are all among the better British Isles/UK-ish food you can find, they have Guinness and Alley Kat and Kilkenny on tap, so you can kick back with some good eats, and have a full cup of coffee while you're at it. And remember: Wolfhound cares what you think.*

:) *especially if you google bomb them, sez the cynic in me



But seriously, Wolfhound: thanks for listening. Congratulations on the new renovations, and good luck in the future. If you're asking, Girlfriendoseyo would be more easily convinced to come and have your great food if the first of your two floors were non-smoking. But still: good music, great food, thanks for being there, Wolfhound.

Another story that'll make you like Wolfhound: they had these popular wedge fries they served, but last winter, potato stocks were low quality. Rather than serve up inferior potato wedges, Wolfhound put up signs saying, "Until potato shipments improve in size and quality, we're taking potato wedges off the menu, because we'd rather not serve anything, than dish up rubbish 'taters to paying customers." Gotta respect that, yah? Yah.

-Roboseyo