14 Thoughts About Stranger Things, Season Two! (With Lots of Spoilers!)

1)  We get it -- people smoked a lot in the 80's.  But people did not smoke that much.

2)  "I am on a curiosity voyage, and these are my paddles!"  Dustin was great in season one.  He was pretty damn near sublime in season two.  His "cool" haircut was -- wow.

3)  Speaking of hairstyles, Eleven / Elle's boy haircut was really confusing.  Sometimes I honestly thought she was one of the boy characters.

4)  As great as the Winter Ball scene was at the end and how it tied so much together, I think one of my favorite things about this show are the less obvious moments of chemistry, and how even characters who don't really share an arc are still guaranteed to have a really human moment or two.

5)  The Nancy love-triangle is still fantastic.  They frame Jonathan as the moody, Clash-listening poet dude, and Steve as the rich dumb jock from the beginning.  But by the end of Season Two I was kind of rooting for Steve to get back together with Nancy, or at least find somebody new.  He's genuinely a protector of the kids, even when he's still the dumb jock who doesn't know what Morse Code or the history of National Socialism are.  (Arguably my favorite laugh lines of the season.)

6)  The theme of this season, and probably the show, is that "friends never lie."  But of course, they end up lying to each other constantly.  They couldn't protect each other, otherwise.  They couldn't survive, otherwise.  (I'd argue tying up your son / brother and jamming him with sleep medication when needed in order to save the world is somewhat deceitful, at best.)

7)  I liked Max.  Was she necessary though, beyond just "filling in" for Eleven and establishing a bit of romantic tension?  Eleven and Mike certainly don't seem to think so.

8)  I didn't know what to make of Max's brother.  It seems like he was supposed to do more, probably something awful, but beating up Steve was pretty inconsequential.  I will give no fucks if he isn't back for season three.

9)  Speaking of fucks, kids should curse more in movies and TV.  And they should do it in these off-hand, spontaneous ways, just like how kids (and adults) curse in real life.

10)  The only major letdown for me was episode seven, where Eleven goes to Chicago to find her sister.  I think fleshing out her backstory is fine, but everything with Kali and her gang just doesn't work.  Kali's buddies were very Destroy All Movies!!! (in a bad way), and loosening up the action of the last two episodes into three might have worked well.

11)  Goddammit Bob, as with most characters on this show, they set you up as boring and flawed and then manage to develop you in genuinely funny and sympathetic ways.  I wanted Bob to live.  I had many a feel when he died.  R.I.P. Samwise.  I mean Bob.

12)  Barb shall have her revenge on Hawkins, Indiana.  (She really did!  At least on the governmnent scientists who managed to get her killed, thanks to Nancy and Jonathan and the crazy conspiracy dude!)

13)  My Stranger Things season three betting pool:  What insanely neurotic behavior will Mrs. Byers engage in next season (decorating the house with Christmas lights, Will's crayon drawings) before being proven absolutely correct about everything she thinks is going on?

14)  I hated the fact they used The Police's "Every Breath You Take" for Eleven and Mike's first kiss (an admitted stalker anthem) but then, right on the line "I'll be watching you," we get the big old reversal into the Upside Down which ends the season.  For a show about inter-dimensional space demons, this show really has the lightest of touches at times.  That's not easy to pull off, and I think that's why I love it so much.

The Need For Regulation

After a slew of product safety recalls ranging from eggs to humidifier cleaner to tampons and pads, some South Koreans are becoming "chemophobes" and dedicating themselves to chemical-free lifestyles:

"Following these crises, there has been a rise in what many are calling chemophobia. Generally defined as an irrational fear of chemicals, chemophobic people try to rule out the use of chemicals in their daily routines, although to what extent differs by person.

Fifty-four-year-old Kim Kyung-ae, a mother of two, has made major adjustments to her life due to her fear of chemicals. 

After working for eco-friendly organization iCOOP for seven years, Kim realized the serious health risks chemicals can pose to one’s health. Ever since, she has minimized her use of chemical products by either personally making or purchasing eco-friendly goods like skin lotion, shampoo and detergent from small business owners. The recent crises have reminded her of the danger of chemicals, forcing her to look back on what she and her family consume."

 Of course, safer products also tend to be more expensive, leading to a society where only the better off can afford to not expose their children to poison(s).

Late Trumpistan

We live in a world where eight people get killed in a terror attack and I think to myself, "Well, that's not so high."

— Antifa-boo-lus James (@wetcasements) October 31, 2017

Not Bad For A Tuesday

Indeed. For his compromise, Lincoln got shot in the head. https://t.co/OhjGnjHwjX

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) October 31, 2017

I'll take my tiny life achievements as they come. Getting retweeted by Ta-nehesi Coates is one of them for today.

Muellerween

And so, the first of what will hopefully be many indictments.

But if 2016 taught us anything, it's to never, ever have positive expectations of any kind.

America and the world will get a lot worse before it ever gets any better.

The problem remains a really simple one -- as long as Paris Hilton is getting another tax cut, Republicans simply don't care about little inconveniences like treason and foreign powers interfering in our elections.

"bad men who are unwilling to reckon with themselves"

I'm a big fan of Drew Magary's NFL preview piece, the Dick-Joke Jamboroo.  Irreverent!  Poop jokes!  Making fun of the self-serious morons who constitute most of American sports journalism!  And this week, shit gets real:

"We are all, as a country, being forced to reckon with bad men who are unwilling to reckon with themselves. There’s a bad man in charge, and bad men in the government running amok at his behest, and other bad men who are currently either indulging in their abuses or being exposed for them. There are too many men out there who think if they can’t be bad men, they can’t be men at all. You see this in the language of the alt-right. Liberal men are pussies. Losers. Cucks. Considering the feelings of others is for hippies and eunuchs.

But that’s a huge lie, maybe the worst lie. You can be a red-blooded, beer-drinking American man who is also not a fuckhead. Portnoy is merely profiting off the endemic laziness of the male internet: guys unwilling to do the not-terribly-arduous work required to try to get better, instead codifying their sexism and racism into a full-on identity in order to lionize their own inaction."

Things have to get better eventually, don't they?  Who the fuck knows.

Blueberry Hill

Fats Domino and Jimmy Smith live, 1962

R.I.P. Fats.

Let's Do This

My usual World Series protocol goes something like this:

1)  If Orioles involved (LOL), GO FUCKING ORIOLES!  (Protocol last engaged in 1983.)

2)  If Cubs involved, root for Cubs.

3)  If not Cubs, root for A.L. squad involved.

4)  If A.L. squad involved is Yankees, FUCK THE MOTHERFUCKING YANKEES and root for N.L. squad.

So technically I guess I'm bound to root for The Astros this time around.  But I'm not.  Thing is, I really like Puig.  The Dodgers also have a Korean pitcher, Ryu Hyun-jin but he's out with injuries.  So I'll happily, if somewhat lukewarmly, break protocol and root for L.A. because in the back of my little pea-brain Houston is and always will be a N.L. squad.  A fun one, though.

Dodgers in six.

Rape Culture

Sexual harassment and abuse are not partisan issues.  Men in positions of power have, for decades at Fox News or Miramax, in the White House or in a chic restaurant, felt like they could abuse women and, due to their power and money, not suffer any consequences.  Quite the opposite, actually -- it was the women who suffered when they wouldn't go along, missing significant career opportunities or simply being frozen out of journalism or acting or cooking or what have you.

So the appropriate response is, of course, for men to first shut the hell up and finally start listening to women, and taking them seriously at all times when they talk about their experiences ranging from rape to more subtle, but still terrible and demeaning, forms of harassment.

Next, let's acknowledge that rape culture is a thing that's bigger than party affiliation.

That's a bridge too far for some though.  There's a genuine glee among Republicans that hey, big-shot Dems like Weinstein are creepy rapists too!  (I'll spare you the many easy to find hot takes out there, amounting to if Weinstein does what Trump has done, somehow it's all no big deal because, and I swear this will be engraved on the figurative tomb of American Democracy, Both Sides Do It!)

And while I'm happy to blame Trump and Trump voters for a hell of a lot of things these days, this isn't on them.  This is on all of us, especially men like me, who have ever for a second thought that rape and sexual harassment were something women needed to handle on their own, or who have ever for a second decided to doubt before listen.

If there's one thing deeper than the racially charged and aggrieved motivations of Trump voters (there can't be many!), it's that misogyny might be an even stronger or insidious part of our cultural fabric than racism is.  At the very least, it's something we haven't been able to talk about in a full and open way, and our national reckoning with rape culture has started decades later than it should have.

I can do better.  We can all do better.  And I welcome -- I absolutely relish -- the naming and shaming and casting out of powerful men in the coming days, months, and years, regardless of political affiliation.  The idea that somehow I wasn't happy to see Weinstein go down, or Cosby (who should be in jail but isn't, even though his career is over), or any other supposedly "liberal" power player is crazy.

Bring it on.  Bring them down.  Bring them all tumbling down.

Honestly, that's the easy part.  For men like me, it will only be the beginning of the hard work we need to do -- radical adjustments in our behavior and our attitudes and our capacity for solidarity -- always and from now on.

Rockers Defeat Mods

Daegu is far from the supposed fashion Mecca of Seoul, and I'm pretty much the antithesis of fashionable myself.  But if my students' autumnal fashion choices  are to be believed, black leather jackets and skinny rolled-up jeans are "it" for the end of this year.

"I want to be high when I die"

Art Pepper, "Arthur's Blues" live

From Straight Life: The Story of Art Pepper:

"We were put into a cubicle in the emergency area.  Art jumped up on the examining table and told me he was starving.  He asked me to buy him a candy bar.  I left, found one for him, and returned to find him sniffing a line of coke.  He said, jokingly, 'I want to be high when I die.'  I took the coke away from him.  Suddenly he cried out.  He said he couldn't see out of his left eye and he couldn't move his left side."

I've been on a definite musician biography / band documentary kick over the past few years.  From the expectedly and unexpectedly good (Bob Mould and Moby's biographies), to a truly outstanding and authoritative work on The Replacements, to a mostly good series of essays on L.A. punk, Pepper's biography was a bit of a left turn for me into jazz, the 40's and 50's, and drug, drink, and sexual abuse that is disturbingly unapologetic.  There's a bit of a redemptive arc here, but it's purely musical.  He's high out of his mind until the very end, literally.  And that's strangely refreshing -- while O.D.s are nothing to laugh about, I couldn't care less about musicians who get sober and then, supposedly, start making their best music ever.  (Hint: post-sobriety music is never the best work a musician will ever make.)

Anyone who's read the book (at a rather hefty 500 pages) knows that the word "jokingly" in the quoted passage is far from it.  The book begins and ends with Pepper pretty much saying that he is, above all else, a junkie first and a musician second.  (Sexual deviant third!)  He died at 57 but, true to form, still played masterfully on the alto sax up until the end.  The Youtube link here is merely one year before his death.  (I think you'd have to be really charitable to say that Miles was making significant music in 1990.)  During the final tours, he "held it together" with daily binges of alcohol and cocaine, and probably less frequently heroin and / or methadone.  He lived on candy bars and take-out.  If there's a music cliche I do approve of, it's that he found his final musical redemption by touring Japan and discovering, much to his own surprise, that he was something of a living legend there.

While many music bios will incorporate recorded interviews, an interesting thing about Straight Life is that the whole thing was done as an audio recording by his wife, Laurie, who me he met in one of his many stints in rehab.  (She admits that she was still using herself at the time of his death, in pretty much the Platonic ideal of a co-dependent relationship.)  She had majored in sociology, and while the writing comes off as very smooth and straightforward it's easy to forget that these hundreds of pages were dictated rather than composed by the subject, and that the whole thing is a borderline ethnography of sorts.  It also incorporates interviews with other musicians, family members, and junkies, and those passages are much more hit-and-miss.

The passages where he simply talks about music, and specifically what makes for great music and musicianship, are sublime.  No doubt one appeal of the book is that the transitions between utterly depraved drug abuse and sexual perversity glide seamlessly into meditations on what makes for great art.

Not an easy read by any means, but definitely worth the effort.

Uber Warning

My boss just got back from a business trip to Hanoi. He was taking an Uber to the airport to return home and got into an accident. The driver was going way too fast and playing with his phone, even after my boss (a pretty polite person overall) asked him many times to watch the road. They rammed into a truck that had the right of way, and if my boss was in the passenger seat instead of the back seat, he would have been severely injured. (The pictures he took were really scary.)

As it stands, he flew home to Korea with a sprained wrist and was very shaken up about the the whole thing. The Uber driver literally refused to call for the police or an ambulance for fear of getting arrested, and as mentioned, if this had been a more dangerous accident, my boss would have bled to death by the side of the road.

I'll admit, I've opposed Uber from the beginning because of their unfair labor practices. They are the definition of "Vulture Capitalism," not building something new, but just exploiting inefficiencies to make a buck and then move on. But I'd also suggest that in underdeveloped countries you are taking your life into your own hands in an Uber. Sure, a regular cab driver might behave the same way, but at least you could contact a cab company. Hopefully, you'd have a more experienced driver to start with as well.

As it is, Uber drivers are basically internet-contracted Gypsy Cabs, and I would never take a Gypsy Cab in New York or anywhere else.

Groovy Tunes

Blade Runner 2049 Soundtrack, Hans Zimmer & Benjamin Wallfisch

We're living in a pre-apocalyptic nightmare the only solution to which might be global nuclear annihilation and letting the cockroaches finally take over, but at least there's a good soundtrack available for us to listen to.

Love And Theft

It's a national stereotype that Western nations produce intellectual property, while China merely copies it.  In the case of South Korean T.V. (shows of which are popular throughout Asia), it just might be true:

"When Chinese television network Hunan TV announced late August on its official Weibo account its lineup for the upcoming television season, it was met with criticism over possible plagiarism by not only Koreans but also Chinese audiences, who wrote comments saying, 'It’s gone too far. Stop plagiarizing.' and 'I feel so embarrassed.' 

The description of one of the shows, 'The Inn,' sounded quite similar to JTBC’s 'Hyori’s Homestay' that wrapped late last month. The Korean show follows Korean pop diva Lee Hyori and her husband, guitarist Lee Sang-soon, offering accommodations at their home in Jeju Island to travelers. Similarly, 'The Inn' is a reality program centering on two famous celebrity couples offering accommodations to visitors. 

Amid the backlash, its first episode aired on Saturday. The show took a famous married couple, actress Liu Tao and businessman Wang Ke, to a remote area near Lugu Lake in Yunnan, where homes set against the beautiful landscape were prepared for the stars to take in guests. The first episode did not reveal much, as it showcased the celebrities getting ready for their guests by setting up equipment and purchasing ingredients to prepare meals. How much it will parallel 'Hyori’s Homestay' will be seen in the upcoming episodes."

I've actually never warmed up to the charms of Korean dramas.  Even K-Pop is occasionally good for a laugh or an ear-worm of a chorus, but when my Korean friends discuss the merits of the their favorite shows I, ahem, tune out.

Note:  Advanced Conversation posts are based on articles I've discussed with my adult conversation students.

"you are part of the problem"

Lindsey Adler pulls no punches as to why Weinstein and Cosby and Trump are a male problem, first and foremost:

"If you are a man who truly didn’t know—who has now heard something on this line from a woman you are close to and who is finally opening up with her story to you about a mutual friend, or family member, or colleague—ask yourself why it took so long. Ask why it took yet another run through the cycle for her to trust you. Ask yourself why the women you know haven’t shared the massive accumulation of information they have stored on their mental hard drives by their 20s if not before with the men who are good, who know better than to treat women as objects.

If you leave this issue to women, if you refuse to make your friends or yourself be better—whether by intervention or by consequence—you are part of the problem, no matter what you make of yourself. If you are closing yourself off from the information that has been out there for too long to be worth considering about gender, power, and violence, or the cyclical flows of personal anecdotes about them, you are not excused. It has been too long, too obvious, and presented too many ways for anyone to claim ignorance."

This is why "rape culture" is still such an effective term to describe what's going on these days.  Most men go through life never raping anybody (congratulations, I guess?).  All men do, to some extent, contribute actively or passively to constructing environments where women can be, in fact, raped, or at least harassed, cat-called, stared at, or made to feel creeped out.

Adler is pessimistic that things will change after Weinstein, but she's spitting fire here against the passive, enabling "not all men" perspective.

Deep Political Thought of the Day

We get daily reminders that President Pussygrabber in a gigantic asshole. But worth remembering this is _exactly why people voted for him_.

— Antifa-boo-lus James (@wetcasements) October 18, 2017

Eleven Thoughts On Bladerunner 2049 (Spoilers!)

1)  The soundtrack is dope.

2)  The female lead performances (Luv, Joi) are incredible.

3)  In fact, I found myself wanting to go deeper into the relationship between K and Joi.  That really felt like the center of the film to me.

4)  The virtual threesome was rad, and it felt like one of the few times these days that CGI is done right, to produce a unique and interesting effect, not just to vomit pixels all over the screen.

5)  Harrison Ford was O.K., but a script that didn't use him might have been even better.  He didn't really need to be in this other than for fan service purposes.

6)  At this stage of advanced late capitalism I have very mixed feelings about Jared Leto, but he was a commanding presence.  At the same time, he felt under-used.  Why no backstory?

7)  I liked the ending but no, K didn't die.  He's just taking a nap and catching snow flakes on his tongue.

8)  The biggest problem of the whole film is the relationship between Wallace and the cops.  Like, Luv just straight-up murders the forensic team dude to steal Rachel's DNA and nobody seems to care much about it.  Then she murders the goddamn police chief and it all seems like no big deal to anybody.  I get that Philip K. Dick (and William Gibson after him) is all about how corporations have complete power in the future, even above governments and nation-states, but this seemed really under-cooked and confusing to me.

9)  K kills off Luv and the Wallace stooges and Wallace doesn't respond?  Doesn't do anything to retaliate, even though he's super-powerful rich scientist man?  He's all-rich and all-powerful except when he isn't?

10)  The final fight scene is kind of cool except when the camera cuts to Ford and he literally has no idea what to do with his body or hands since he's tied to a chair.  Really kills the tension.  (Have I mentioned he really didn't need to be in this film?)

11)  Also problematically under-cooked -- the whole replicant underground resistance plot.  It seems like they should have been done more than provide a hooker for the threesome and to tell K he's not really the chosen one.

11)  

"nanny nanny boo boo"

Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, "Blue Cheese"

Bladerunner 2049 opened here in lovely South Korea today, and I should be able to get to the theater tomorrow.  Dennis Villeneuve can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned.

Meanwhile, here's a song from the perfectly pleasant new collaboration between Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile.  And hey, that's Janet Weiss on drums.

More On Why Soccer Doesn't Work In America

This whole article from 2016 (!) is worth reading as it really digs into the cultural and economic factors inhibiting the creation of a more successful national men's soccer squad in the U.S., but this part stood out:

"Economics work against the poor kids in American soccer. Lusson sees this every week as he moves between the teenage girls team he coaches in the wealthy San Francisco enclave of Pacific Heights, and the teams he manages in lower-income Hayward. One night, a few weeks ago, he listened as girls on the Pacific Heights team talked excitedly about applications to elite east coast colleges. The next day, in Hayward, nobody talked about college.

And yet he is amazed by the skill of his Hayward players, who he says would crush the Pacific Heights team in a match. These are the players who could be the future of American soccer, perhaps even rising as high as a national team. But he also knows that the Pacific Heights players will be the ones to play on their college teams and will be identified by US Soccer. They are the ones who will get a chance that the Hayward kids won’t. And this strikes Lusson as very wrong."

I'd only add that genuine skill in basketball, American football, and these days to a lesser extent baseball, are still possible golden tickets out of poverty.  It's a shame soccer can't seem to catch on as a "real" sport in my home country.

And with the disaster in Trinidad, it really feels like we're stepping back a few decades.  And to beat my dead horsie, Klinsmann got us to the round of 16 a mere three years ago.  That seems about the best result possible with the talent ceiling we have now, and encouraging U.S. players to go to Europe was the right thing to do.

Life Goals

Tampopo trailer

I've still got more pics from Tokyo to sort through and put up but for now I'm closing in on one of my serious life goals.  As much as I love sushi, as much as I love takoyaki (octopus balls!), I think my real Japanese food passion is -- to risk cliche -- ramen.

Now, Korea has plenty of ram-yon, but it's pretty much universally salty and bland.  I will very occasionally have a small cup of it with lunch in the winter, but that's about it.

Japanese ramen, however, is heavenly.  It's no secret that real Japanese ramen has a lot of love and work put in to make the broth earthy and rich, while Korean ramyon almost always starts off with a water base.  Japanese ramen is a humble food that has grown up to achieve greatness.  Korean ramyon never made that precocious leap into culinary adulthood.

Anyhow, I've put the word out to my adult students that Teacher James is desperate to find good ramen in Daegu.  On Twitter, I learned that Seoul has no shortage of great places for the Japanese style but they can pound sand.  I've learned so far that a nearby neighborhood has a good joint, as does the huge Hyundai Department Store downtown.  (Not surprising, since their food court also has very good Indian and Italian.)

Daegu winters can be cold and bleak affairs.  I want -- need -- my ramen / umami fix over the coming months.

This Is My Not Happy Face

I liked Klinsmann.  But it made sense when he left, as it seems like he'd lost the team.

But bringing on Arena?  Moving backwards, literally if not figuratively?  Huge mistake.

And so it goes.

"crack up in the sun / lose it in the shade"

The Replacements, "Hold My Life" live

I'm very stoked for this reissue, The Replacements live in '86 just before they "made it" with a major label.

One of the things I really enjoyed about Trouble Boys was that it managed to solve a great mystery for any Replacements fan -- they were, according to many, either the very very best or god-awfully shocking worst live band they'd ever seen.  In fact, the first live videos I ever saw of them had them playing pretty damn tight (even Bob!).  Turns out, Paul and the guys kind of decided before going on stage whether or not they'd put on a good show.  And of course, even mid-show they might decide to ruin it all if they didn't like the crowd or, if the stars aligned or the coke and pills and drinks were particularly good, they might decide to actually give a fuck and actually perform at their best.

Anyhow, a lot of these tracks sound awesome.

Tokyo Pics Two

Shinjuku -- fortune teller and "Robot Restaurant"

Akihabara -- Mario racers

Ueno -- Tokyo zoo

Tokyo Pics

Tokyo, Japan -- Kabuki-cho, Shinjuku

Meiji Shrine -- votives

Yoyogi Park -- graffiti

Shinjuku -- conveyor belt sushi

True Fact

The "Tokyo feels like Bladerunner" thing is totally a cliche until it starts raining... Then it feels the fuck like Bladerunner. #fact

— Antifa-boo-lus James (@wetcasements) October 9, 2017

Tokyo Two

Tokyo was a blast.  Lots of pics to sort through and post.

I ate takoyaki every day and I'm not ashamed of it at all.

Tokyo

I'm off to Tokyo for a few days for Chuseok.  Stay safe.

Vegas

Ed from Gin and Tacos says it better than I can:

"Mass shootings are to the modern US what human sacrifices were to some societies, but replace the sun with 2nd Amendment and the bountiful harvest with Freedom. If 58 people have to die so that we may enjoy the freedom to own 35 guns – the killer had at least that many – that is a sacrifice white America is prepared to make. YOU are a sacrifice they are prepared to make. You don't matter. Nothing matters is Larry Limpdick's need to feel tough or manly or important or strong or ready for the Race War he and everyone else in the comments section of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is certain is coming because BLM or campus libtards or something.

We have so thoroughly normalized a completely demented, paranoid, conspiratorial, afactual right-wing worldview that a man can buy 35 guns and not only are there no meaningful obstacles to doing so but the fact isn't even considered especially noteworthy or out of the ordinary. The very fact that we live in a society where a person can announce that they own 10 or 25 or 50 or 100 guns and the overwhelming, immediate response is not 'What in the living fuck is wrong with you?' followed by a psych evaluation is the definitive proof that this will keep happening over and over and over again."

The NRA will have its blood tax, always.