In Ong Bak 2 (Tom Yum Goong), witness perhaps the greatest action movie sequence ever as a team of super strongmen rough up Tony Jaa:
And then throw his pet baby elephant through a window.
This is not a joke. This is cinematic magic.
Graaaaaaaaaah! If you liked the original Ong Bak, this'll do you right: more crazy jump-kicks and flying knees, more painful snapping of limbs and more English. That's right, half the movie is set in Australia and it's pretty hilarious to see a 'genuine Australian anchorwoman' (who is clearly Thai) struggle awkwardly through her script. No kidding: she tramples grammar in a way which hardly makes it seem viable that she could be chosen as the mouthpiece of a nation, but in the end the awfulness just adds to the charm. At least they tried.
There's also a self-referential one-liner about how people who pirate DVDs are disgusting. And there are tons of elephants. And Tony Jaa gets to fight some Xtreme Sports guys on motocross bikes and rollerblades who are swinging fluorescent lightbulbs. And he fights a sword guy. And a breakdancing guy. And about a thousand flunkies. And a chick with a whip. And her uncle. Tony Jaa kicks the shit out of everybody.
Ong Bak 2 is basically the perfect date movie.
Posted by Chris at 10:48 AM >> Commentations (5) | Permalink
April 25, 2006 >> A Tale of Two Claras
Clara #1 is eight years old, a former denizen of my kindergarten homeroom last semester. She's the one with the awesome gap-toothed smile, whose mom never came to our events and is presumably under the impression that 'school' is synonymous for 'babysitter'. I am convinced that there is no way you could possibly meet this kid and not instantly fall in love with her.
Clara's been sick lately; she's fallen victim to one of the virulent strains of flu that courses throughout Seoul despite the overadoption of SARS masks in this country. Last week, Clara threw up a banana all over the classroom floor. Then, unphased, she took another banana from her backpack and immediately started eating it. "No more bananas, Clara," I had to tell her. "Fuck those poisonous bananas. Stop eating the banana, okay?"
She convinced me that usually bananas are fine. "Not sick, banana okay; I'm sick... BLECH!!" She pantomimed vomiting and ate some more banana.
Yesterday she came into class, tears streaming down her face as she coughed unabatedly. She couldn't write because she was too busy coughing, and eventually she started retching and throwing up. Again. Two times. Yellow like banana. The other kids were captivated with the air of squeamish fascination that children worldwide savor and save for new and abominable scenes of life, like dead birds and spaghetti. I was mildly horrified myself, and wholly unimpressed with the show.
"Dammit Clara, you're sick! Go home and sleep, and NO BANANAS. Tell mommy that Chris teacher thinks you might die, alright? And you'd better not be going to piano today!"
Clara assured me between spews and coughs that mommy did, in fact, want her to go to piano. Intolerable! So I leaned out the door and yelled for Supervision, who escorted Clara out to clean her up and hopefully get her some sorely-needed medical attention. Minutes later she returned, which was puzzling because surely she was in no shape to learn about which animals walk and which ones fly. And she was still coughing up a storm.
Two more upheavals later and my suspicions were confirmed: Clara was not in a learning mindset. She was not capable of playing piano. All she was capable of was redecorating my classroom (well, Mike's... heh heh heh) one putrid splash at a time. She was violently ill and needed to sleep off this madness.
We called mommy. Mommy was not happy that her surrogate parentals had failed to magically fix her child, but Clara was heading home regardless. There's a hint here, a lesson about parenting and no longer forcing your virally wracked kid to play piano and learn English just so you can go to work. Education is not a substitute for responsibility. We dig your kids, but it's kinda your job to keep them alive.
And stop with the bananas already.
*****************************************************
Clara #2 is older, more adept in the sly mannerisms of using English to piss me off. She's lazy and doesn't do her homework. Her favorite word is "Why."
Me: "So, you see, jazz music is important because it helped black people and white people get along in a time of segregation."
Clara: "Why?"
Me: "Well, they played music together. And it helped them learn that they were all people with similar interests."
Clara: "Why?"
Me: "Clara, shut up. There is no melting pot for someone like you."
Clara: "But whyyyy?"
Of course, she doesn't really care what the answer is. But she's entertaining - Clara adds spice to her class, when she's not asking 'why'.
Today at about 5:20 a pizza showed up at Herald. The delivery guy claimed that a "Clara" had ordered it. Upon inspection, Clara was not in her first class. She wasn't at school. Clara's moving to America with her mom, you see, and all month she's been vague about her departure date. I always just figured she'd disappear, like so many kids before her: leaving one night and just never coming back. They all vanish without saying goodbye.
It struck me that this was Clara's goodbye: a pizza prank call for her last non-day of school. She had a cell phone. She had the mischievous nature. She was moving away. And it was a damn small pizza: pizza in Korea is wildly overpriced and undersized, a gourmet item for the Western wannabes with deep pockets. Oh Clara, you devil.
So I laughed and laughed and was fully prepared to buy the pizza myself, when she showed up in a flurry with her mom to pay the disgruntled delivery boy. She had skipped her first class and showed up at school just in time to eat pizza and watch Narnia with me, since she knew damn well I wouldn't make her do any actual work on her last day. And so we ate a pizza and a box of chicken wings and Clara made some acute notations about changes from the original book - "Teacher... why is there tunnel in the beaver house? THERE IS NO TUNNEL IN STORY!!" - and computer animation - "Aslan is not real, yes? He is special computer lion. Teacher ... ... *vacant pause, as if assembling a logical leviathan* ... ... I like his hair!"
The last bell rang and I had to stay at school for an extra hour because she wanted to see Aslan respawn, and I've always heard it's bad luck to refuse final requests.
Spoilers: The White Witch gets eaten by Aslan. Clara goes to America without handing in the essay she promised me from a month ago. Neither ending surprises me.
Posted by Chris at 06:34 AM >> Commentations (4) | Permalink
April 23, 2006 >> Slaughter at Seoul Tower
There are two routes up to the base of the tower, which is perched atop a mountain peak: the cable car and the walking. We decided to hike up and armed ourselves with gross-tasting cookies for energy. When the bus dropped us off, however, we were about fifty feet from the summit. The trek was gruelling and we lost many good men to the deadly machinations of nature, but somehow (SOMEHOW) we arrived atop the mountain along with ten trillion other visitors. A hullabalo of crazy music and free food greeted us: some kind of festival was underway but we only had eyes for the pinnacle.
Let me just mention right here that Seoul Tower is a dirty lying trinket. It claims to be the fourth largest tower in the world, but it is clearly cheating the rankings by sitting atop a sizeable mountain and counting the mountain as part of the tower. We wondered: could you build a foot tall tower on top of Everest and then claim that you had constructed the world's tallest pinnacle? Korea's desire for achievement sometimes gets a little out of hand. Their tower is not very tall and they should just accept it.
At the top we located our respective homelands: I had Toronto, Mike had London and, since Sunni was already from Seoul, we made her point to Saudi Arabia in the interests of diversity. Mr. Len had already claimed his spot on the map, as I later found out. Nationalistic minds think alike: we can't resist pointing at glory.
Mike had resourcefully brought along a board marker from school and labeled the men's restroom: "WOMEN ONLY!!" We killed ourselves at 800 feet (rounding up), watching English-speaking visitors double-take and look around awkwardly while unperceiving Koreans breezed on by. There is little more finery in this world than depriving someone of their bathroom privileges through trickery. Yes, we're idiots, but have you ever noticed that idiots get to laugh a lot?
We also re-evaluated North/South relations: a propaganda mill at work.
So that was the tower. It was pretty tall... and stuff. There was a restaurant.
But the weirdest was yet to come. At the base of the tower the staged ceremony was in full swing. Don't ask me what's going on in this picture... a man is examining a pile of dead pigs stacked in a compromising position with a little too much interest. But actually being present at this illustrious affair was far more bizarre.
A fine assortment of musicians in hanbok attire belted out such screechy traditional Korean classics as, "Screeeeeeee BOOM BOOM SCREEEE-SCRAWWW!" and "Your Ears Be Meltin, Weigook (feat. Nelly)." The crowd seemed to take their punishment in good spirits, but for me it was far from an auditory adventure. It was an auditory abomination.
Luckily, it was hard to concentrate on the music. A veiled priestess-woman was chanting and raving, and four men lifted each expired pig and impaled them each on a big pitchfork in turn. Then they stacked them up on a table, legs akimbo. The pigs, being dead, predictably had no objections. I shot What-The-Fuck expressions at onlooking Koreans, but for the most part they just shoved past me to get a good view of the sacraments. Then a giant severed cow's head was held aloft as the pigs were butchered and quartered, presumably for ritual consumption, and What-The-Fuck turned into It's-Time-To-Go-Right-Now-GOGOGOGOGO KAJA!! Authenticity is cool, but can't we please think of the poor beasts' families?? Bacon is OK; public skewerings are cruel.
We took the cable car down the other side of the mountain. I was morbidly pleased to see that the lineup at the bottom wound down the stairs, through the lobby and well out the front doors of the station. It would take at least an hour and a half for those at the end of the line to finally ascend to Seoul Tower. If they had simply walked past the cable car and up the steps chopped into the hillside, it would've taken twenty minutes, tops. This is often the nature of modern mankind: to voluntarily creep forward forever just to enjoy the privilege of not moving one's feet more than absolutely necessary.
It's a costly luxury; wasting the day, standing still, while the slaughter of pigs rages above the treeline.
Posted by Chris at 07:02 AM >> Commentations (2) | Permalink
April 19, 2006 >> Thinking about Lying
One thing that I really like about blogging is that it makes you more honest, both in your writing and in your everyday life. The crossover from physical living to virtual storytelling is often quite a trek, especially if you have a penchant for exaggeration like me. But when your friends read your blog, you have to watch what you say. You can't say one number and type another. Your truths are transparent. And the best, and easiest to remember, branch of reality is always the one that actually happened. You can still build your own little sand castle on top of an honest foundation.
Posted by Chris at 10:51 AM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink
>> Binary Calls
On the plus side, you now have my home address and can send terrible things like cookies to my house. Man I hate cookies.
Posted by Chris at 10:37 AM >> Commentations (5) | Permalink
April 17, 2006 >> BOOM! Headshot!
This weekend we played some paintball, which admittedly isn't a very culturally relevant thing to do but it can be if you pretend that the other team is a horde of North Korean communists come to rape your paycheck. Once you get past the awkward sensitivities of screaming, "Here come the filthy yellows over the ridge!" it's a lot of fun. I was on the Green team, you see.
The shebang was arranged by Adventure Korea, a group of lucre renegades who make a good living off Westerner ex-pats and generally offer very satisfactory services. This time, however, said services lay at the end of a three-hour subway, bus and walking marathon so we were all feeling a bit unsaucy as we finally wobbled over a suspension bridge and into the Woodlands of Paintable Combat. Way up past the northwest end of Seoul, you would think that simulated warfare might be a bit closer to home for these battletorn Korean folk (meaning: closer to my home). But once we clasped firepower in our clammy hands, all was forgiven in a rush of adrenaline and threats of forthcoming headshots.
My experiences with paintball have been regrettably limited in the past, but I played a shitload of Team Fortress as a kid so I figured that would translate into combat expertise. Imagine my surprise when I sallied forth on our first round of conflict and faced the harsh realities of painted war. After scrubbing around the bushes with Dave and Chad in an area nowhere near the focal point of attack, playing at being commandos, I decided to take my invincible self to the front. I rushed the ridge fearlessly and... POP ... took one right in the forehead. I was dead without firing a single shot. OMG WTF sniperz!!!
I walked down with my gun held high in pitiful surrender to the waiting area, a morose valhalla of the slain, and toweled myself off. Next time I would be ready!
The next round was capture the flag and here was where I was sure my Team Fortress experience would pay off. Capping flags was kind of what I did, those early high school years, y'know? I was lame, but I could concussion-grenade jump like a champ. So the whistle blew, I charged valiantly for cover behind a stack of logs... and got shot in the knee. Fuck!
Crestfallen, I walked the shame path back down to soldier's heaven, the first casualty in what would prove to be a route of my team. I sucked, but at least my hopper was stacked with unfired ammo. Maybe I could excel as an ammo-boy, a wheelbarrow supply chain who props up the real soldiers until he is accidentally killed when a colonel's parrot steps on the hammerlock of a pistol and blows the poor bastard's kidneys out. Yeah, that sounds like the ticket to me.
Fortunately, the next game proved to be a bit more fruitful. Overflowing with killing marbles, I trained my gun at enemy foxholes and spammed the everliving shit out of them until they rose, defeated, covered in yellow death. I killed and killed and killed with mindless attrition. I also managed to put my hand in a thorn bush, but a palm full of needles is a small price to pay for not getting shot (for once). And I was happy in my slaughter.
Then the Adventure Korea portion of the adventure was over, but we were invited to purchase additional ammunition at the modest price of 7 000 won per 100 paintballs to continue slaying each other. Ahhh... and herein lay the rip. Needless to say, we hadn't traveled three hours to not shoot paintballs, so eager buys were made and the fray was met once more.
One of our boys had bought four canisters of paintballs and he became the mortar, firing wildly into the air as fast as he could reload. Meanwhile I found myself a little too bloodthirsty for my resources and had to go on suicide runs along the ridge to get the most out of my sparse remaining ammo. For some reason, everyone loved shooting me in the knuckle, so I had to clean off my gun a lot.
Finally, my moment of glory came when I went on a flag run in my last game, five paintballs left in the hopper and nothing to lose. I stumbled out of cover and down into the hollow where a red flag hung on a branch, a deadly fruit for any comer. The air turned into popcorn and I found myself the target of an entire army. Hoping to pull the flag at least five paces back towards my team before I was eviscerated, I was mindblown to find that I was clambering my way back up the hill with the prize and nobody had shot me yet. Oh, they had tried, they had emptied the barrels of destruction in my direction, but through the will of some trickster god of unconventional physics, I remained unscathed!
So I got to be a pseudo-war hero for five minutes until the next game started, and that's more than I possibly expected, not being a Winner by nature. If I was a natural Winner, I wouldn't have needed to tell you about getting the flag, am I right? I would've just said "Yo we played paintball and I was characteristically awesome." But really, how fun is that? I'm used to laughing off my losses, but I kind of appreciate my history of failures because they let me boast like a dick on those rare occasions when the boat floats my way. Wheeeee!
Posted by Chris at 10:36 AM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink
April 16, 2006 >> Zoo Zoomer
On arrival, we were overjoyed to find that a bevy of professional guides were willing and able to lug our kids around beastly displays without our assistance. With our hands untied, we were able to eat large quanties of fried chicken (the kids' parents always send food for teachers along with their prodigal offspring on field trips).
Anyway, Space Case Grace is in the younger class and she's nuts: she likes to run down the hallway and hide in cupboards as soon as the bell goes to begin classes. And she sits, cross-legged like an Indian and patient like Gandhi, under the table until I finally notice she's staring absently at my kneecaps. And we use a basic English book - Tiny Talk, it's called - and Grace has this thing where she scribbles black crayon all over the face of the cartoon Tiny Talk teacher. Poor Miss Dolly. A black face on every single page. The effect is sorta like that kid from The Ring. And Grace doesn't call me Chris teacher, or even song-sang-nim, like the other kids. She calls me apa, which means Daddy. But she doesn't especially like me. Uhh...
So she's pretty weird, but her mom plys the school with more free food than I've ever seen in my life. Boxes of donuts and barrels of strawberries. And I kinda dig the strange kids, because strange is where intrigue lives. Grace's favorite animal is a snake.
At one point, Mike kindly donated his skills as a White Person to one of the other groups for a photo-op. None of the other schools had a White Person, let alone four of them, so we tried to share ourselves. Despite the legit teachers' dubious sidelong glaces, as though we were going to feed their kids to the elephants, we got the job done. Hells yeah! And I managed to sneak the elephant at least four delicious children, whom he promptly devoured.
Anyway, I would like to take this fine elephant-penis opportunity to talk about how the average Korean will treat you if you happen to be an English-speaking foreigner. This only applies to open areas with large crowds - subways and stairwells and sewer tunnels are a different matter altogether. But shut the fuck up and here we go!
Old people: Old people will either ignore you, smile widely at you with no teeth, or start to rant maniacally to nobody in particular about how foreigners are disrespectful and in the good old days a brash sassypants whiteface would be getting paddled in the town square. I assume that's what they're muttering anyway. It's nothing good, that's for sure.
One teenaged girl: She will ignore you studiously. There is a 25% chance she will take a picture of your back with her cell phone.
A small group of teenaged girls: Giggle giggle giggle. Once you've walked past them, they will shout "Hello!" or "ILOVEYOU!" or some other stupid English thing at you. Then they will send ten billion text messages to their friends. If you try to have sex with them in the elephant pit, they will not appreciate it.
Small group of guys: They will either try to be badass and stare at you while muttering 'weigook' this and 'weigook' that, or they will be super over-the-top and scream "HELLO HOW ARE YOU I AM FINE THANK YOU SORRY SORRY SORRY!!!" Either way is an unsatisfying encounter.
Parents with small children: You will immediately be offered 50 000 won to teach their 8-month-old child some English.
Parents without small children: They will be pretty busy thinking about having a(nother) child. Or perhaps they are deep in discussion about love motels, specifically in regards to marital fidelity and Plato's perception of love as a non-physical act, especially not with a baseball card call-girl. Either way, they won't really notice you. Score!
Okay enough of this silly generalization-digression. We were at the zoo, weren't we, and our kids were protectively proud that we were getting so many teenaged idiots yelling parroted English our way. An associative disorder: they were holding hands with the sorta-maybe-cool foreigners who were being audibly greeted and gangbanged by the BIG KIDS and... well, I'm sure you can see how this works. I held way too many tiny hands: they jockeyed for position, grabbing and pulling and desperately clawing for handholds on my jacket and it was a TOTAL CHICK MAGNET for me. Or at least so I imagined, my actual import acquisition of chicks being rather fruitless. But at least I had a multitude of children attached to my clothing!
So we stumbled unevenly away from the street madness, ran to the dolphin and seal show. You know how this works too. The dolphins jumped and the seals balanced balls, but one seal sexy-danced his trainer in a manner definitely not rated G for General. And then came lunch, and the self-appointed hour for Chris teacher to hang back and smoke a cigarette with a surly camel. But pretty soon it was about time to run (in a line... always in a line!!!) back to the buses, exhausted and falling down and generally feeling like refugees from an Africa gone horribly wrong, an Africa where the beasts were boringly passive and the real wildlife roamed free, wielding hand phones and plaid uniforms and embryonic English.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH! SORRY SORRY SORRY!
Posted by Chris at 11:32 AM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink
April 11, 2006 >> Binary, choose a path already
The time has finally come where I feel like I have Owned Korea: I am totally pro and nowhere near a n00b anymore. Nevermind that my Korean lessons have degenerated into me asking for random phrases whenever the need pops into my mind - "Hey Cindy, how do I tell this guy he's a fucking dickhead without using any bad words that'll get me punched?" It's not quite immersion. It's more so that I feel somewhere close to home in this monolith of strange railwork, I understand the implications if not the words. It's week to week now, not day to day or hour to hour.
On the downswing of my contract, I have started considering my departure. My future, if any remains, rests squarely in the hands of one very special Board of Admissions. That's right: a single board. Not five or ten or desperation Anywhere Will Do. One application to become a Grand Master of higher education and if my application fails... well, I'm going to blockrockin' Europe. Or Cambodia. Or Hong Kong. I almost hope I get rejected, because I'm aching to throw away my savings, one more time, on something decidedly non-educational (in the conventional sense of the word).
The scales balance rather unevenly, depending on the minute. I want to go back to school to, you know, make something of my life. To fatten the rucksack of practical experience with another degree. To finally study something that actually interests me, and not just a vague sideways approximation of new media theory: a direct hit. It's juicy, as juicy as a classroom could possibly hope to be.
But it's two years, and if you learn anything in Korea (Jesus, how many times have I spouted that?) it's that these years in your twenties are a rock-solid-gold commodity. Halfway between youth and experience, you can't afford to waste any time. Better do some kickass stuff, or you'll be sorry. Is grad school kickass? As kickass as riding elephants in Thailand, perhaps, or chopping coke in a Malaysian warehouse? That's the kicker: you'll never know to find out. You have to choose - you can't shop and compare value because, if you could, you'd likely be a God or some kind of hardcore prophet. And then what fun would life be? Always getting renounced and killed with rocks for being a heretic.
Life is not an easy ride: visibility is severely limited, with possible rock slides up ahead. This is probably what every human since the 6 a.m. of humanity has understood and bemoaned, long before the car and most likely even before the wheel and the ride itself was invented. That probably doesn't make any sense but I like cavemen, and wondering what those crazy fuckers were up to back before the Internet.
I can force myself, without much duress, to picture a neanderthal all slung up in Stereotype Valley, standing at an important crossroads: "Uggg... should I hunt mammoth today or have a nice picnic lunch of clover and leftovers with the slavewife?" Of course, I have translated many Uggs and Ogggs into Sorta English for the sake of clarity. Anyway, our hide-wearing hero chooses hunting because week-old giant squirrel tastes gross and in the instant between being gored through the heart by an ivory tusk and death, he regrets his decision. In retrospect, clover is always better than getting nose-stabbed by a hairy elephant.
Now, it's my personal opinion that a life of backwards glances and What If's is scary, not only for a caveman but also for the modern human saucepot. And so I find it logical to hinge a decision on a very basic, binary opposition. Binary knows what's up. So here it is, on a raging grill of simplicity: If I get accepted, I'll go. If I don't, I won't.
Logical, maybe, but not really easy. The world is shrinking and if technology has taught us anything, it's that small things are cooler. Africa is just on the other side of that basketball.
Posted by Chris at 07:55 AM >> Commentations (4) | Permalink
April 10, 2006 >> Candleless
On hazy tenament rooftops, fire roman candles. Fire them through the mist of a meteorological Red Alert, punching crackling holes in the cloud of dislodged dust that ambled south from China. You're wearing a blue SARS mask, where SARS is now the choking dust, and you feel vaguely like a bandito or surgeon or another professional of dubious, yet slightly bad-ass, repute. You can't see much: the mechanized tigers of China have been clawing through trees in recent years and the topsoil blows where it will, primarily into Korea. And it settles in the air, on your skin, into uncapped bottles of Cass beer. You're on Red Alert.
But you're firing roman candles. You mustn't forget that, and how could you? The whizzing of projectiles and the pop of technicoloured explosions and the acrid smell of gunpowder all around you turn time into mud. Forget departures, both pending and past. Not even the blinding vista of neon signage cutting through the night as a full-time occupation can distract you from the fact that these fuckers are trying to shoot you with fireworks.
You can see other English teachers, whooping and flitting around the constraints of the rooftop. You duck and dodge and weave behind planters, trying to shoot them all in the face or, perhaps, the back if they are temporarily unarmed. You don't pull many punches, not after all the battles you've seen. You've been shot in the ear on the beaches of Busan and had your balls blasted by a duel-wielding Australian wench. And so, tonight, you will chase the headshot.
The rooftop is ablaze and you can only imagine the incredulity with which honest Korean folk must be surveying the battlefield from their adjacent homes. They can surely tell that we're not From Here, can't they? They're probably wondering what the hell we do to their kids in the sober daytime while we're teaching.
Candles extinguish, one by one: ammunition expires. And deck chairs are flying. The artillery is here. The heavies have joined the fight. And yet nobody is down: no eyes punctured by shrapnel, no eardrums imploded from a direct hit. You are all too drunk to aim at anything worthwhile. Perhaps if you were trying to shoot the sky - shred the clouds and burn the blankets of dust - you would end up destroying someone, but not tonight. Not in an active state of conflict. Real war could take a few cues from your staggering level of inefficiency: world peace through exceptionally poor aim.
As the last projectile pops without harm and the aftermath settles comfortably on top of the smog, you check yourself for injuries. Burns, yes. Disfiguring scars, no. Holes in garments are a small price to pay when you're fighting Chinese air pollution. Look down to the street, for there walk the fearful civilians amidst this dark and desperate struggle. There walk the candleless.
Posted by Chris at 11:49 AM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink
April 09, 2006 >> Speak for me, please
The Marta teacher is gone, flown the coup with a large quantity of Korean kitsch and konglish clothing. The Sam teacher is gone, contract filled, swallowed back up by that heartless nation known as Australia. The Chris teacher is sullen, heavy and weighed, and has therefore co-opted some of the Marta's vast selection of digital photographs for content (with prior verbal consent). In her fresh-faced exposure to the madnesses of Korea, she caught lots that I've been taking for granted for months, so perhaps we can all stand to learn a thing or two about cityscapes and not talking in the third person. Me? I'm a little lost these days, both grammatically and otherwise.
The industrious and always-under-construction center of Sanbon...
And the fearsome army of apartment complexes that surrounds it.
And, of course, the naked baby orgy sculpture.
Many a drunken philanderer has tried to hit the Fever Ice Target at Sanbon's King of Pirates, but
Chad is probably the philanderiest.
Mayhem in the Norae-bang! Note the classy painting in the background, and also the sad facial deformities of those trying to sing.
Marta and Sam shamefully taking advantage of an intergalactic visitor.
My rack is way sweeter than Marta's because my nipples are made out of chocolate.
An Enchanting Glade (In Technicolor)
Glammy Sammy, advanced airborne mincing.
Here is a children!
One of the best things about Korean cities are the street-meat stalls that are set up to all hours of the night, serving up cheap fried stuff and da-bok-ki (giant rice in blazing hot sauce) and kebobs.
Say goodnight, but the neon never sleeps.
I miss people sometimes, too, you know? I say this with a touch of surprise and a dash of red bean paste, but if anyone's getting eaten, it's me. I want things back in the most festively selfish way possible.
Posted by Chris at 09:08 AM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink
April 06, 2006 >> Intermission
Between the cascades of goodbyes and singing 4 Non Blondes in an alien pod melody capsule, I don't know when I'll ever have time to write again.
So why am I telling you this? Because I can. And I'm drunk.
Posted by Chris at 12:48 PM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink
April 02, 2006 >> Sweet Jam Departure
Last night was a "sweet jam", as my noble contemporary Len Ball would say, and in fact he did say it because he was there. Hongdae is an interesting place, one which I have repeatedly not visited in the past and suffered scathing insults from Len via cellular telephone as a result. I have overcome: the phone and Hongdae are now married, implement and fateful location tied together. You'll see.
Hongdae is, by and large, known as Seoul's primary club district. Alongside the standard hip-hop crawls (or 'black music clubs', as many of them are identified in a not-very-politically-correct-way), Hongdae is a hotbed of alternative nightlife. Lots of electronica, lots of club names that you've heard of but which prove rather impossible to find nestled in the winding, crooked streets of dark neon. We found Cargo in a basement. Inside Cargo we found a lengthy lecture about snowboards. We found gold-digging girls who think white guys are much better than Korean guys until white guys don't want to pay their cover, in which case Korean guys are suddenly better. We lost stolen bottles of white wine, casing smashed against the concrete, bleeding cheap rivulets into the worn cracks. Say sorry in hangul.
We found m2, which is probably Seoul's most notorious club. Notoriety comes from trance, from house, from recruiting DJs from Europe to spin under green lasers and then spend three days in jail for working without a proper Visa. The jam was sweet and packed and deep, pasted with arms and faces and legions of bass. m2 was an exciting piece of work but then it swallowed my jacket, which vanished into coat check and was never seen again, to my wasted dismay. So goodbye trendy iPod and goodbye Dickies Jacket That I Liked and, most of all, goodbye cell phone. I was starting to become reliant on you, like an eleventh finger or some other kind of bizarre radiation growth. In the silent taxi ride home, I examined the hole left by your sudden departure and decided that you were probably a Satan that I had once loved.
Posted by Chris at 12:00 AM >> Commentations (6) | Permalink