Please No Don't Do This To Us Korea

For about two years now my college has implemented a "reflection" class.  After the final exam, we're supposed to meet a final time to review the semester's work.

It's fucking awful.

I can't blame students for absolutely not giving two shits about this class.  Other than giving them their scores for the final, there's not a hell of a lot for me to do other than take attendance.

Mentally, they've checked out for whichever break, winter or summer, is about to begin.

Mentally, I've checked out after a frenzied week of constant grading.

And the thing is, while of course the students hate it, so do the other teachers and professors (the real, Ph.D.-having ones, unlike me).

Nobody wants it.  But the Korean education department decided this was a good idea so suck on that.  That's basically what it boils down to.

I'm going to put together some type of video-based activity, something light, but I'll basically be basking in resentful student gazes for two hours and, well, that's entirely their right.  To paraphrase Frank O'Hara, "bureaucrats of Korea, let your children go off to the PC-Bang."

That said, Bohemian Rhapsody has been something of a minor hit here so I'm putting together some study guides for "Under Pressure" and "We Are The Champions." (Teaching "Bohemian Rhapsody" itself would be fool's errand.  That shit cray.)

"Jazz bastards will fall and confess / We all love you so and your rock"

Guided By Voices, "The Colossus Crawls West"

My attempt at putting up an appropriately deep and amazing GBV cut, because I'm deeper into them than you bro!

This weekend I finished a Robert Pollard biography, Closer You Are.  It was appropriately thorough and workmanlike, covering pretty much everything you'd want to know about Dayton's foremost rock and roll genius.  The early days are fascinating, as Bob basically decided he wanted to make albums more than just music, and started famously designing band names and cover art before he ever picked up an instrument or gathered musicians around himself.

Also, while the influence of booze is pretty much part of the GBV credo, there were plenty of harder chemicals that got thrown in to the mix at various times but, Bob being Bob, he usually managed to put his foot down before too much damage was done to his band's reputation.  As "loose" and he comes off onstage and on recordings, he takes his musical legacy incredibly seriously.  (As he should.)

So not to damn too much with faint praise, but this is a perfectly serviceable bio that's strong on details (with copious citations) but maybe a little weaker on the themes and ideas that continue to drive Bob today, beyond his love of music and his insane level of productive energy.

As I suspected too, Bob is a much better musician than he tends to let on.  He played all the instruments on "Man Called Aerodynamics."  And scientifically and objectively speaking, that's a killer fucking track and one of the best album openers of all time.

We Will Pleasantly Surprise Your Lowered Expectations, You

I went and saw Bohemian Rhapsody despite a fair number of negative reviews and, well, I thought it was pretty great.  I've never been a huge fan of Queen myself, but I think the film got skewered by, on the one hand, fanbois and on the other Pitchfork-reading music snobs.  (Confession -- I am a bit of a Pitchfork-reading music snob!)

But Rami Malek shines as Mercury.  And I feel older than usual because I've never seen him in anything before, but he was fantastic.  The opening shot of him and the prosthetic overbite is just about as risky as a mainstream Hollywood film will get these days, but I got used to it quickly enough.

Is a bio-pic about the most prototypically bombastic and over-the-top front-man of all time allowed to be, in its own way, a bit bombastic and over-the-top, maybe even borderline cheesy?  I think so.  I really do, form fitting function and all that stuff.

I also think this movie "gets" creating music in ways most other films don't.  (Like, say, the incredibly overrated Whiplash, where songs are slavishly formed by musical Ubermenschen alone on their own mental islands, even when in the same room, and any hint of fun or abandon is bad and wrong).  Sure, there are some cliches of "frustration in the studio" but those are balanced out by shots where Freddie pushes the band in directions they wouldn't have gone otherwise.  It's awkward and painful and stochastic, creating great art, and it usually comes from more than one person and their sacrosanct "genius."

Good art tends to be messy, is what I'm trying to say, and this is a messy film that I think generally works with a few missteps (the press conference scene).

I did wonder why Bowie didn't make an appearance.  "Under Pressure" gets woefully short shrift compared to "Bohemian Rhapsody" or even "Another One Bites The Dust."  You've got Rami in buck-teeth prosthetics, why not role the dice on a coked-out '82 Bowie?

"You’re building a ghost town"

Double Dagger, "Luxury Condos For The Poor"

My humble little college is technically a private school (although as in America, it gets a decent amount of funding from the government).  And while we're roughly equivalent to an American community college (it's complicated) we aren't exactly cheap, either.

All of this is just so I can complain about students who simultaneously a) bitch about how expensive our tuition is while b) skipping my class, constantly.

Also, Double Dagger were a tremendous band.  They should never have broken up and then they should have moved to Daegu so they could hang out with me this weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I still miss Christmas a little bit but frankly, Thanksgiving means close to nothing to me after nine years in South Korea.  Sure, I miss my family, and home-made food comas are always welcome, but since it's not a holiday here (Christmas day is, interestingly) it just doesn't register with me any longer.

That said, by all means this Thursday, feel free to call out your racist uncle on his #MAGA-bullshit:

"If you’ve got a truly virulent bigot awaiting at Thanksgiving, it’s important to remember that this person is bitter and afraid of having the privilege that comes with being rich or white or male (or all three) stripped away from them as marginalized groups fight for liberation. If they don’t see anything wrong with using homophobic language or screaming about the Second Amendment while everyone’s trying to enjoy their turkey and mashed potatoes, then you probably shouldn’t feel awkward about letting a few curse words fly in pursuit of telling them to shut the hell up.

In Hallmark movies, Thanksgiving is all about bringing families together to share in an expression of gratitude, but let’s not deny that these gatherings are more complex than that. The personal has always been political, and what happens in our homes has actual impact on the world outside them. Is there a better opportunity than this moment, when everyone is sharing a meal, to bring people together in a way that actually, honestly invites everyone to the table? If we are truly committed to justice for all, we have to create just spaces wherever we are. Our failure to translate private disapproval of bigotry into public protest, even at the dinner table, is an endorsement of immeasurable cruelty."

A vote for Trump was a vote for a racist pussy-grabbing fascist who is totes cool with the live dismemberment of dissident journalists.  I can think of plenty of lesser reasons to cut ties with family and friends, or at least to actively mock, shame, and shun them forever and ever.

Documenting The Atrocities

Things that apparently don't matter when a Republican does them:

1) Shitting on veterans / active military

2) Using personal e-mail for Top Secret stuff

3) Falling in love with foreign dictators (literally)@realDonaldTrump #TCOT #MAGA

— Cranberry Jelly James (@wetcasements) November 20, 2018

Inside (Korean) Baseball

I'd be lying if I told you I wouldn't shiv your grandma if it would net me one of these vintage Hyundai Unicorn jerseys.

This here humble Korea blog officially loves Korean baseball -- the chanting, the cheerleaders, the fried chicken and blood sausage, the bat-flipping, the beer.  Nothing better.

This article does a nice job of explaining the intricacies of Korean baseball team names -- the first thing to know is that neither the city nor the mascot is usually referred to like in American ball, but rather the corporate sponsor.  It can get pretty complicated:

"The Nexen Heroes exited the 2018 KBO playoffs early and nameless.

When the Heroes crashed out of the playoffs in the fifth game of a down-to-the-wire postseason clash with the SK Wyverns, the club’s sponsorship contract with Nexen came to an end.

Immediately after getting knocked out of the postseason, the team officially became the Seoul Heroes, the only team in the KBO without a sponsor in their name. The name Seoul Heroes didn’t last very long, though. Just week later, the club finalized a deal with securities firm Kiwoom Securities. The club is now tentatively being referred to as the Kiwoom Heroes, although its official name won’t be revealed until January.

This isn’t the first time that the Heroes have been rebranded. The club started life as the Sammi Superstars in 1982 and has since existed as the Chungbo Pintos, the Taepyungyang Dolphins, the Hyundai Unicorns, the Woori Heroes and simply the Heroes."

I mean, come on -- do team mascots get any better than these?

No they do not.

And my first ball game in Korea was watching the now defunct Woori Heroes (pics over at the old blog).

Excelsior! Part Two

I thought the internet would be a lot harsher on Stan Lee but I was wrong.  (I am usually wrong!)  Here's a really nice piece on how "Stan Lee Taught a Generation of Black Nerds About Race, Art, and Activism":

"It wasn’t until later in life, when I started studying and teaching about comics instead of just reading them, that I learned that none of this was a fluke. Stan Lee was an activist artist, a Jewish guy born to Romanian immigrants parents in New York who hated bigotry. He was explicit about it in both his Stan’s Soapbox editorials that ran across all Marvel Comics. He called bigots 'Low IQ Yo-Yos,' he said that anybody who generalized about blacks, women, Italians or whoever hadn’t truly evolved as a person.

He was doing this in comic pages when mainstream newspaper editorials were still deciding if black folks should be able to live where they wanted. When Marvel Comics were afraid that the Black Panther character would be associated with the Black Panther political movement, Stan Lee pushed for T’Challa to keep his name (at one point they wanted to call him Coal Tiger). All of this at a time when even having a black person in a comic was still considered controversial. Just last October, Lee posted a spontaneous video on the Marvel’s YouTube page stating the foundation of Marvel Comics was to fight for equality and battle against bigotry and injustice."

As mentioned, without Stan Lee's talent at self-promotion comic books would remain the marginal bits of niche culture they once were, not today's drivers of Hollywood.

It's no surprise that Lee and Kirby's creations were the original Social Justice Warriors which is to say, heroes.

Ruh-Roh

Guys: Nazi imagery and nuclear bomb explosion images are never funny.

(Except when a Korean boy-band unwittingly does it. Then, honestly, it's a little funny.)

— Cranberry Jelly James (@wetcasements) November 13, 2018

"they will never come back"

Is it even worth quoting from Trump think pieces any more?  Arguably, no.  But David Roth doesn't pull punches:

"Trump and a lot of the people in his thrall are, it seems safe to say, gone. They will continue to walk among us—Trump will be in a golf cart—but they will never come back. They are somewhere else. There is nothing they are not prepared to believe if the right people say it; they will choose the right lie over any truth not just without regret but with pride.

America loves to tell stories about itself to itself, and if these are not all quite lies they are mostly much sweeter and safer than fact. The lies that Trump has told since his party lost badly in the midterm elections have ranged from the usual—the loss was actually a win, thank you to all—into more explicit and desperate denial. It’s not a new thing for Republicans to justify voter suppression and resist vote-counting, but as Trump has subsumed his party the importance of his particular fantasies—Trump still, somehow, does everything off the opening position that he has never been wrong or lost—the attendant need to make his lies true has grown and grown. He will lie if the truth doesn’t fit and millions will hear that lie as a truth for that reason. Order will supersede Law, because it is easier that way. This is all open field. Anything that needs be can be labeled a fraud or the bought-and-paid-for result of a conspiracy, any fact can be made into something else afterwards."

Things will get worse before they get better.  But I do feel as if, unlike a year ago, things are going to get better.  Watching Trump crumble in real time is a delicious start.  But as he falls apart, how often and how strongly does he lash out, and how strongly will his Republican Party continue to defend him?

But for now, the feeble-ass motherfucker can't even go outside in the rain.

Excelsior!

Godspeed, Stan Lee.

I realize it's not very cool to mitigate the obvious facts -- Lee took a lot of credit (and money) for the hard work of visual craftsmen like Jack Kirby.  (I highly recommend this Kirby biography / coffee table book).  But if Lee was rapacious, he was also a brilliant promoter who managed to bring some incredibly weird-ass shit into the pop culture imagination.  (Let's not forget, superhero and horror comics used to be much less popular than Westerns and Romance ones -- Lee pretty much blew that dynamic out of the water.)

The issues of authorship in comics, the tension between writer and artist, remain fascinating, especially now that they've become staples of mainstream Hollywood film.

Eat Me

Korean "Meok-Bang" (literally, "eat broadcasts") are taking the Youtube world by storm, but the government here is worried about possible health repercussions:

"To slow down Korea’s rapidly rising obesity rate, the Ministry of Health and Welfare outlined pre-emptive and comprehensive obesity prevention and maintenance measures to hold onto 2016’s obesity rate of 34.8 percent through 2022. 

Without the regulations, the obesity rate in Korea is projected to jump to 41.5 percent by 2022, according to data provided by the ministry. 

When controversy over the government’s regulations snowballed, the Health Ministry later said that cracking down on mukbang is impossible.

Those against the government intervention generally argue that people should not be deprived of the right to watch the content they want in a democratic country while those on the opposite side stress the importance of the government’s role in regulating an environment that fosters obesity through the exposure of content that excessively stimulates their appetites."

I'm too old too appreciate this stuff I guess.  I'll just stick to porn.

"You will sing forever like an angel who flew away"

Stereolab, "Feel and Triple"

Lurvely Daegu is getting cold and the leaves have finally turned color.  (The ones up in the surrounding mountains turned about a week ago.)  Teaching continues.  I'm reading two books right now, a biography of Robert Pollard and one of Elvis Costello.  I might go back to America for a visit in February, but I might not.  (I usually go in the summer.)  And I'm playing Red Dead Redemption II and finding it, so far, surprisingly clunky and overrated.  (I swear the on-foot and on-horse controls are significantly worse than the original five years ago).

So yeah, things are OK I guess.

Is it OK to eat a cold brick of tofu with a pack of kimchi on top for dinner and watch Joe Robinet minimalist outdoor survival videos on Youtube at night?  Because I've been doing that a lot lately.

Mic Drop

I'm quoting Ed from Ginandtacos again because he's spitting absolute fire these days:

"So I get it. It's depressing. There's no amount of positives that can take away the nagging feeling that lots and lots of people in this country are just…garbage. They're garbage human beings just like the president they adore. These people are not one conversation, one fact-check, and one charismatic young Democratic candidate away from seeing the light. They're reactionary, mean, ignorant, uninteresting in becoming less ignorant, and vindictive. They hate you and they will vote for monsters to prove it.

Remember this feeling. Remember it every time someone tells you that the key to moving forward is to reach across the aisle, show the fine art of decorum in practice, and chat with right-wingers to find out what makes them tick. Remember the nagging sadness you feel looking at these almost entirely positive results; it will be your reminder that the only way to beat this thing is to outwork, outfight, and out-organize these people. They are not going to be won over and they will continue to prove that to you every chance they get."

The only way forward is to convince non-voters to vote.  "Redeeming" or "chasing" those who have gone full-Hannity is an exercise in futility and a waste of resources.

Register to vote, try to convince friends and family to do the same, then vote.

That's pretty much all we can do in the face of looming fascism.

Mixed Bag

I slept poorly last night.  (Note to self: bringing an iPad to bed to monitor early USian election results was not a good idea.)  Obviously, I'm happy the House was taken back by the good guys and that we'll finally see some actual checks on The Orange Pussy Grabber.  That's huge.

What sucks?  Well, basically Florida and Georgia and Texas.  How any electorate could turn down figures as inspiring as Gillum and Abrams is beyond me, especially when you consider that white people are gonna vote for white racist people, forever.  (Beto was always going to be a hell of a long shot.)

Barring Constitutional remedies, I'm not sure how the Senate ever becomes a functioning, semi-representational body rather than the White Rural Bulwark it was created to be.

Some good news in local races though, and those matter a lot.

Of course, Mueller is now going to wind up or wind down Russia-Gate in what should be appropriately dramatic fashion.

But to be blunt, I'm not sure if my mental health can sustain two more years of Trump, let alone six.  (Does he ever get fucking exhausted with his own bullshit?  No?  Okay then.)

Anyhow, Josh Marshall deserves the last word:

"But I come out of tonight feeling good about the result. Why? The country is in a position where we don’t have the luxury of getting everything we want or getting overly disappointed if we don’t. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that Gillum went down to defeat. But there was one absolutely critical thing that had to happen tonight: the Democrats had to reclaim a foothold of power in Washington to place a check on President Trump.

They did that. It wasn’t close. The victories had geographical breadth. That is critical."

Politics is the ultimate breeding ground for cliches, so embrace it: this is a marathon, not a sprint.

In The Army Now, Or Maybe Not

Nearly two years of military service is mandatory for all male Koreans, but unlike the U.S. military the concept of a "conscientious objector" is a relatively new one.  However, the Korean Supreme Court has now made it possible for C.Os to avoid jail-time:

"The Supreme Court's ruling comes on the back of a decades-long fight by conscientious objectors, many of them Jehova's Witnesses, to push back against the country's stringent military service law, under which all men between the ages of 18 and 35 are required to perform at least 21 months of military service.

'We are happy to hear that the Supreme Court of South Korea has made a historic decision to recognize the rights of conscientious objectors,' said Paul Gillies, international spokesman for Jehovah's Witnesses at their world headquarters in New York.

'For the last 65 years, over 19,300 Jehovah's Witnesses (in South Korea) have been imprisoned for standing firm for their Christian beliefs. This ruling is a huge step forward in ending this policy of imprisoning our fellow believers for conscientious objection.'

However, the Thursday ruling will not affect those already in prison, and only applies to the cases considered by the court and those in future."

Military service is a Big Deal in South Korea, and men who shirk it are definitely looked down upon.  But C.O.s who pick up a criminal record basically can't work white collar jobs for the rest of their lives.  I'm guessing that before long this will change.

Confessions Of A FOX News Orphan

Ed from Gin and Tacos is reliably excellent on every topic, but here in The Baffler he really cuts close to home for me on the subject of FOX News Orphans, i.e., the grown-up children of formerly smart and successful parents who have gone full-#MAGA over the past two decades:

"Spend a full hour reading right-wing Facebook. It is like a funhouse mirror; you’ll feel the what-was-in-those-cookies sense of having entered a fantasy world of grievance and rage—a Lewis Carroll version of The Turner Diaries, a John Birch Society children’s book for sundowning grandpas. It is a barrage of propaganda crafted around the biases of old white people to exploit their deepest racial fears and authoritarian-follower personality traits. Much of it makes Fox News look tame and responsible by comparison. Toy commercials could only dream of reaching kids as effectively as the right-wing noise machine hooks our elders.

Now imagine looking at that for hours per day, every day.

What would be left of your brain after several years of that? Like the president they so blindly love, the brains they once had become a puddle of Cracker Barrel sausage gravy strewn with flotsam and jetsam of the Greatest Hits of the reactionary playbook. These are randomly sampled, irrespective of time, logic, or coherence. Immigrant caravans! Soros! New Black Panthers! Vince Foster! Card Check! Seth Rich! Uranium One! MS-13! Crisis Actors! Anchor babies! Whitewater! Her emails! Cap and Trade! Thugs! Birth Certificate! Every obsession is equally relevant. And the right time to be very, very mad about all of it is right now."

I guess I should tread lightly here but it's interesting that my dad, who happens to have a Ph.D. in biology and had a very successful career in science, is basically one of these Zombie Republicans now.  It hasn't been easy to maintain a relationship with him, honestly, and Ed is right to point out the utter weirdness of these people.  During phone calls, snail-mail letters, and my annual visits, I try to stick to neutral topics like the weather and sports, but within three minutes of discussing Seahawks football he'll be asking me about Maxine Waters or Seth Rich.  He can't stay on any topic for longer than a cup of coffee without invoking the latest right-wing outrage de jour.

So maybe he's just poking fun at his liberal son?  All fun and games?

Well, no.  For years I've noticed that while standing in a supermarket check-out line he would sometimes bring up these kinds of FOX keywords with absolute strangers, or with (god forbid) the checkout clerk.  Because they must brood and fret and stew about whatever it is Limbaugh was on about earlier today just like he does, right?

(During the Obama years my sister and I were convinced that he'd shoot his mouth off about "this black Muslim president" and get beat up or worse, contacted by the police over a potential death threat, intentional or not.)

I'm convinced that simple pleasures like a sunny day or a glass of wine are permanently diminished for him, what with the constant siren call of "lock her up" or "Kenyan Muslim" resonating throughout his head always, everywhere.

Here's the kicker though -- as awful as Facebook is, my dad brought this upon himself with a steady diet of pre-internet media starting during the Clinton 90s, and exploding after 9/11.  He doesn't even own a computer, but Limbaugh and Hannity and The Weekly Standard were enough to poison him forever.  Analog paranoia and hate is more than sufficient to ruin a formerly free-thinking person.  And no doubt, Facebook has come along at the opportune time to amplify this lunacy to exponential heights of bitter madness.

It's brainwashing of the highest level.  Between hours of FOX on cable and radio, daily, I doubt Jim Jones could have done a better job of basically turning a high-functioning mind against itself and, frankly, fucking up what was once a perfectly imperfect but sorely missed father-son relationship.