New Books!

Beastie Boys Book

Samuel Delany, Babel-17

Samuel Delany, Heavenly Breakfast

Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room

Erin Osmon, Jason Molina: Riding With The Ghost

Jon Peterson, Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-Playing Games

BBB is thick as a brick, but a multi-media work with tons of pictures and comics and graphics.

Playing at the World is pushing 700 pages with teeny-tiny script.  In a life filled with nerd-tastic adventures, getting through this one should keep me in good standing with geekdom for the rest of my life.

Hanoi

Of course Trump wants to spin his Hanoi debacle as a "walking away" situation, a tie, a neutral outcome.

However, Kim Jong-un will train back to Pyongyang more powerful, and more assured of his power, than ever.  No doubt he wasn't exactly in a bad position pre-Singapore, but now he and North Korea have been legitimized as an international power, not a dictatorial backwater undeserving of meeting with the United States president.

North Korea is stronger than ever before.  The US has gotten nothing.  Japan is rightfully bemused at how dumb a large portion of the American electorate must be.  Russia is laughing at us, because of course they are.

And South Korea?  Well, Moon Jae-in was probably hoping for another "success" like Singapore but at the very least he has no reason not to continue working on his own directly with Kim on detente between South and North.

That's a silver lining of sorts, albeit a slim one.

"Blindspots"

Is food political?  Absolutely.  Food criticism?  Korsha Wilson argues, even more:

"I did not feel any of the delight that most of the critics felt. Instead, I felt embarrassed by this nostalgia, and the fact that I had just participated in it. I wondered why, in New York City, one of the most diverse places in the country, I was one of two black patrons in a dining room at one of the best-reviewed restaurants of the past year on a Friday night; I imagined how those reviews might have been different if any of them had been written by a person of color.

While for some, Kennedy-era Manhattan is an inspirational time, calling to mind gleaming buildings and uncut optimism, for others, it represents a bleak period of misery and oppression. The original Four Seasons opened in the space in 1959, five years before the Civil Rights Act was passed, meaning I might not have been able to eat where the Grill now stands; in fact, it’s hard to imagine that this space would have been quick to welcome black diners even after the act was passed. Or that its designer, the famed architect Philip Johnson, would want them there, given his history as a Nazi sympathizer. This is a context I cannot push to the back of my mind when dining."

One person's "Golden Age" is, of course, another person's memory of oppression.  And it is strange that this kind of culinary nostalgia is taking place in a time and place (New York especially, but large American cities in general) where you can pretty much eat anything from another country with relative authenticity and pay much less for it.

Hot Oscars Take

bingo -- best picture is always some variant of "racism in America was never that bad / could always be overcome by kindly White Folk and Passive Black Folk" https://t.co/5eHGDzMGbt

— James, Mother of Dragons (@wetcasements) February 25, 2019

"We watch the fireworks in an open field / And stay so late we miss the train"

Bob Mould, "Sunshine Rock"

Mellow Bob is still slightly angry Bob and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg is such a complete and total shit-bag.

The Bearable Lightness of the Blogging

After a trip up to Seoul a little while back to meet up with some Twitter and Facebook folks, I've been huddled in lurvely Daegu doing a little bit of everything -- reading, making some changes to my upcoming spring syllabus, a little hiking (got yelled at by a South Korean soldier for walking too close to an honest-to-jeebus radar installation by accident), catching up on some movies from 2018, and being disappointed with True Detective.

Some adult students have invited me to the "East Sea" (mention "Sea of Japan" here and you'll get a ton of stinky-eye) next week for sushi, so that should be fun.

So what else can I say?  As long as I don't read US news (lol fascism / the president is literally a Russian asset) or British news (lol hard Brexit hopefully there will be room for all us serfs on Jacob Rees-Mogg's country estates) my vacation has been quiet and pleasant enough.

And did you know that in about 60 or 61, Samuel Delany played a coffee-shop show with Bob Dylan?  (Not a reading, but a musical performance.)  But Dylan was a dick about it and insisted on opening rather than playing after Delany?

Now you know.

"a little about a lot"

So just what is American Food anyways?  New York City chef Tony Liu thinks he might be on to it:

"With family in mind, Liu teamed up with local partners Dudley Stewart and Mike Fuquay to open the Queensboro in a sprawling former furniture store. Jackson Heights has no shortage of Mexican, South American and South Asian food; the Queensboro, with its accessible food, thoughtful drinks program, and roaring brunch trade, speaks to a long-pent-up neighborhood demand for a full-service 'new American' joint that manages to cater to the neighborhood’s eclectic mix of families, singles, and old-timers, who famously speak a collective 167 languages.

'Jackson Heights is very culturally diverse, very similar to what I grew up with in Hawaii,' says Liu. 'I know a little about a lot of cuisines, rather than knowing a lot about one cuisine, so hopefully my cooking at the Queensboro connects with our guests.'”

Koreans tend to have some strange ideas about what Americans eat on a daily basis (cheeseburgers for breakfast and steaks for dinner, always?) so I'm looking forward to discussing this article with my adult students after winter break.  And of course, America has plenty of regional cuisines just like the rest of the world, but they tend to be overshadowed (killed off slowly?) by corporate restaurants.

Since Nobody Asked....

Annihilation was the best film of 2018 and nobody saw it.

First Man was a surprisingly deep and a film that complicates the hell out of an American icon and his wife.

The Favourite was dark, weird, and hilarious.  If there's any message to it beyond "crush your enemies," it's "ignore the whims and desires of men, sexual or otherwise, always."

Bohemian Rhapsody was fun but best picture nomination?  Really?

R.I.P. Frank

Frank Robinson was a bit before my time as an Orioles fan but one of the greats regardless.  I'd forgotten that he was the first black MLB coach.

Sad news.

De Gustibus Yadda Yadda

Alita Battle Angel is the perfect dumb action movie.

(That's a compliment!)

— Winter Wonder James (@wetcasements) February 5, 2019

An Active Social Life? What's That?

It's Lunar New Year, so a happy and healthy Year of the Pig to you and your friends and family!

I went to Seoul last Friday and spent Saturday afternoon (and, ahem, a good bit of the evening) drinking with filthy foreigners in Itaewon.  I knew a lot of them through Twitter, and while older than most of them it was a great time.  I stayed over Saturday night and came back to lurvely Daegu yesterday on my first "no seat" ticket on the KTX (Korean bullet train).  That was a bit of a nightmare but it was my own fault for not buying a ticket in advance.

For some reason, Koreans believe that if a comfortably 25 degree Celsius restaurant or coffee shop is cozy, a 35 degree restaurant or coffee shop will be 10 degrees cozier-er.  Which is to say, they fucking overheat everything in winter, including the trains, and it's fucking miserable.

Anyhow, I'm back home and finally on vacation.  The weather is a bit on the warm side, and the city is more quiet than ever.  After doing some internet stuff I'll do some time on my exercise bike then maybe head downtown for some Indian food.  As much as Itaewon is pretty much a universally acknowledged shit-hole, I already miss the Halal Guys and my favorite kebab shop (Ankara Picnic, right across from the Hamilton).

I recently finished Hanif Abdurraqib's They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, and just started Samuel Delany's The Motion of Light in Water.  The former was great with a few missteps (even a very good writer will never convince me Fallout Boy is brilliant music) and the latter, well, I always get kind of nervous before starting something by Delany, known for his density proclivities, but so far it's -- an incredibly sweet and lucid memoir about his family and love life.  Not quite what I expected, but excellent so far.

Happy New Year!