Yet Another Take On The Last of Us II That Nobody Asked For

The problem with the game is simple: I like one character, and he dies early on.  Beyond him, I just don't like any of these people.  And forcing me to play  half the game as a character I actively hate was a chore.

The whole thing was too long.

Nice music though, and pretty good production values.

Also, please don't make me kill dogs in the future.

Update: God, how could I forget the cringe-iest sex scene ever?

"I wouldn't trust the U.S. secretary of percussion to tell me how to play 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'"

I feel the way about Dave Grohl that I do about Sting -- why listen to his later stuff when you can pump Nirvana (or The Police) straight into your ear-holes?

My music snobbery aside, this piece on (not) opening up schools this fall is excellent and even a pretty wonderful love letter to his mom, a public school teacher:

"Every teacher has a 'plan.' Don’t they deserve one too? My mother had to come up with three separate lesson plans every single day (public speaking, AP English, and English 10), because that’s what teachers do: They provide you with the necessary tools to survive. Who is providing them with a set of their own? America’s teachers are caught in a trap, set by indecisive and conflicting sectors of failed leadership that have never been in their position and can’t possibly relate to the unique challenges they face. I wouldn’t trust the U.S. secretary of percussion to tell me how to play 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' if they had never sat behind a drum set, so why should any teacher trust Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to tell them how to teach, without her ever having sat at the head of a class? (Maybe she should switch to the drums.) Until you have spent countless days in a classroom devoting your time and energy to becoming that lifelong mentor to generations of otherwise disengaged students, you must listen to those who have. Teachers want to teach, not die, and we should support and protect them like the national treasures that they are. For without them, where would we be?

May we show these tireless altruists a little altruism in return. I would for my favorite teacher. Wouldn’t you?"

Amen.  If anything, Grohl is pulling his punches.  We have no plan for opening schools this fall beyond "try not to get sick and die."  It's pure Trumpism.  And it's going to get children and adults killed.

Celebrated Summer

Albert Ayler, "Sun Watcher"

I just taught my last adult class of the semester and handed in my final (hardcopy) grades for my college classes.

I have no right to complain.  I went from teaching five college classes to one, basically, via video recording.  In my defense, I did have to learn two new programs from scratch (one for distance learning, one for distance evaluation) with little to no help from my boss.  I think I also mentioned some drama over the "we won't have a grading curve this semester but then again we will" situation.

But it's over.  And it's strange to think I'll be in Korea for a full August for the first time in over a decade.

I just got some new books though, so I guess vacation is off to a decent enough start.

Maybe I need another Project Herzog in my life.

LOL Hermann Goring

Remember when @DouthatNYT assured us that Trump was an incompetent fascist and not, ya know, a fascist fascist?#Portland #PortlandProtest

— Antifa #BLM James (@wetcasements) July 21, 2020

Speaking Of The New Normal

It's obvious America can't survive another four years of Trump, and while I'll be cheerfully knocking down some adult beverages if Biden pulls off a win come this November and Trump and Barr don't try to enact a coup d'etat (I'll offer you 1:3 odds on the former, 3:1 on the latter) we're still fucked as a nation.  Unemployment will likely be around 20 percent.  Homelessness will be rampant.  A solid 30 percent of Americans will be acting as an embittered fifth column (led by FOX News).  And given that Trump basically wasted half-a-year on COVID containment, we'll be no closer to defeating the virus than we are now.  Schools are going to open way too early this fall, and we're going to be hearing about dead kids and teachers in about six to eight weeks.

Simple, really.

That said, to get meta, it's high time we accept the simple fact that America is a failed state.  It's high time we start talking about America as a failed state.  Hell, I'd bet most Trump voters would agree with me, before or after a Biden victory.  They're a hell of a lot angrier than I am, and I'm pretty angry that my once pretty-good-not-perfect country is now a dumpster fire of white resentment.

It's just strange I guess.  As an 80s kid (born in 1974) there was no doubt as a nation we'd suffer ups and downs (Reagan, Bush II, and Trump as the downs), but to actually arrive at this point is hard to fathom.  It's to realize the experiment in human freedom, or the possibility thereof, is over, and the results have been less than salubrious.

I guess the next question is whether or not we should just accept what's obvious or get to work putting the unworkable back together.

Come this fall we get a slim shot at maintaining The Union, or we allow the Republican Party to continue to exist in any meaningful way beyond a forever-minority party.

Love and Death In A Time of COVID

Weddings and funerals are always important, and in more traditional societies like South Korea especially so.  So what to do in an era of continued social distancing, where churches are some of the worst hot-spots for the spread of coronavirus?  Koreans are experimenting with distance celebration and mourning, with some degree of success:

"'We weren’t planning on a big wedding ceremony, but we were going to hold two separate gatherings — one for my family and their acquaintances and one for our friends,' Jung told the Korea JoongAng Daily. 

But after infections swung upwards, we canceled the family ceremony since seniors are at a higher risk [of infection]. We decided to go ahead with the one for our friends, but we only invited those whom we felt were closest to us and would be able to truly feel happy [for our marriage]. We left the choice [to attend] entirely up to our guests. The party started in the evening and went late into the night, and we tried to spread people out so that the restaurant didn't get overly crowded.'

Since July, offline ceremonies are slowly resuming, but industry insiders say outdoor venues have become a lot more popular, probably because it is easier to practice social distancing at those venues and guests feel more comfortable.   

'Outdoor weddings are in vogue since the outbreak,' said Lee Yu-na, Manager of Sales & Marketing at Banyan Tree Club & Spa Seoul in central Seoul. 'Smaller weddings were already quite popular but due to the pandemic, more and more people are looking into having such weddings. Just two years ago, the average number of guests per wedding was about 170 to 200, but now it has fallen to about 100 to 150. We often also hold weddings with less than than 50 guests.'”

The good news is that if South Korea can make these kinds of adjustments, there's no reason other countries can't as well.

Twiddling My Thumbs

I'm in my office for the next few days basically waiting for students to call me if they have a complaint about their final grade.  (Those were entered into the school computer system last week.)

It's a strange custom, no doubt, and it doesn't help that with distance learning we basically went up to August with our semester schedule.

It's hot and humid, grossly so.

I'm reading articles about how America probably won't go "back to normal" until 2022 due to Cheeto Hitler's utter incompetence.

In a best-case scenario where Joe Biden wins with enough down-ticket momentum in the House and Senate to make it impossible for Trump to start a literal coup headed by Barr, he still inherits a pandemic and a historically shitty economy.

There's your little hint of sunshine for today.

"a Usain Bolt-type performance"

Are we approaching the limits of competitive eating?  Possibly!:

"The theoretical ceiling has been set at 84 hotdogs in 10 minutes. The current world record, set by Joey 'Jaws' Chestnut earlier this month, stands at 75.

James Smoliga, a sports medicine specialist at High Point University in North Carolina who authored the research, described 84 hotdogs as 'the maximum possible limit for a Usain Bolt-type performance'.

The analysis is based on 39 years of historical data from Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, an annual spectacle of gluttony held on Coney Island, New York, combined with the latest sports science theory, which uses mathematical modelling to project trends in performance."

This is the second time I've done competitive eating with my adult students.  They were pretty unimpressed the first time, if not shocked to see so much food wasted.  But I'm so tired from grading, so what the hell.

Yet Another Last of Us II Hot Take Nobody Asked For! (Minor Spoilers)

I'm about four hours in and I'm just so damn bored.  I loved the first game, but remember how much I enjoyed it for the story first and the stealth / scrounge game-play a distant second.

A trans non-gender-conforming antagonist [ed: but antagonist isn't the right word, is it?]?  Like any character, if they are underdeveloped I just don't care about them.

Granted, I'm a grown-ass man now and I don't play vidya games nearly as much as I used to.  A consequence of this is that I just can't "plow through" games to get to the interesting bits.  Not enough time or energy on my part.

And frankly, Ellie has grown up to be a pretty big asshole.

I'm not sure if I'll finish it.  Then again, I'm off work for August and not going back to America for the first time in over a decade.

And I'm all out of Werner Herzog movies.

"not that kind of person"

A few days ago the mayor of Seoul committed suicide.  His secretary, who has yet to be named, has come forward with her story:

"In one account, the lawyer said Park saw a bruise on the secretary’s knee and said he wanted to make her feel better, before he “laid his lips” on the area.

'He summoned the victim to a bed inside a room in his office,' Kim relayed, 'and physically touched her by asking her to embrace him, and invited her to a secret chat room [on the encrypted messaging app] Telegram to constantly send her promiscuous messages and photos of him in his undergarments.'

Kim claimed that the Seoul Metropolitan Government was aware the victim was in pain because she had described her encounters with Park to her colleagues and asked for help. The office, however, did nothing to save her and kept denying Park’s unsolicited sexual advances, saying he’s 'not that kind of person,' the lawyer continued.

 The secretary asked to be transferred to another team, but the request was not acted upon promptly, Kim implied. The lawyer said her first consultation with the secretary took place on May 12."

We all have a long way to go to crush and stamp out workplace sexual harassment, and sexism in general.  But I just choke on the line "not that kind of person."

US Exceptionalism

Florida just reported more CV outbreaks in one day than South Korea has, ever.

SK population: 50 million

Florida population: 20 million

— Antifa #BLM James (@wetcasements) July 13, 2020

Gretchen, Stop Trying To Make Cancel Culture Happen. It's Never Going To Happen.

Billy Bragg (!) weighs in on the so-called "threat" of cancel culture:

"An open letter that is clearly decrying cancel culture (without naming it as such), signed by 150 academics and writers from all sides of the political spectrum, appeared this week in Harper’s Magazine. The signatories complained of a censoriousness that was stifling debate and called for arguments to be settled by persuasion rather than action. Lip service was paid to the menace of Donald Trump, but the main thrust of their argument was a howl of anguish from a group that has suddenly found its views no longer treated with reverence.

Many of those who attached their names to the letter are longstanding cultural arbiters, who, in the past, would only have had to fear the disapproval of their peers. Social media has burst their bubble and they now find that anyone with a Twitter account can challenge their opinions. The letter was their demand for a safe space."

As I've said before, invoking cancel culture is basically the pathetic cry of (mostly) mediocre white men who think the internet or the media owe them some kind of a living.  Also criticism, even outright mockery of shitty ideas, is not censorship.  To the contrary, it's a very good and healthy thing.

Surviving Seoul

As Seoul housing prices continue to rise and more young folks put off marriage for later, the demand for single person housing grows.  Is group housing the answer?  Maybe --

"Social housing carries with it an image of shoddy construction with low quality materials that compensate lower expenses -- a stereotype that Seoul Social Standard aims to smash. Its goal is to create homes that are so cozy and comfortable that tenants renew their leases again and again. 

 Kim said it refrains from designing spaces to look like dormitories where almost every space is shared.  

 'The bottom line for me is one room for one person,' said Kim. 'We call it a not-so-tight-knit community. We try to find a happy medium between being private and being open.'  

'One of the residents [living at a share house located] in Tongui-dong told me that he has more time to explore his neighborhood ever since he moved into the building. He didn’t have a chance to go for a walk or mingle with others in his old neighborhood, but now he spends more time in the communal space inside the share house,' Kim added."

It's not a bad idea, but as we all know it only takes one problematic person to spoil any group housing situation.  Great for parties though.

#ProjectHerzoghttps://t.co/JgschjzFdi

— Antifa #BLM James (@wetcasements) July 7, 2020

Project Herzog Is Complete!

Part I: Overview ("Dignified, Heroic, and Stupid Stupidities")

Part II: Themes ("Do You Dream A Lot Like That?")

Part III: His Best Work ("What a Pity You Can't See the Colors!")

Part IV: His Worst Work ("He'll Shit In His Pants!")

Part V: The Rest ("You Only Have To Show Him Something And He Can Do It")

Now I'm off to watch nothing but Adam Sandler comedies for the rest of my life.  Ciao!

Project Herzog Part V: The Rest ("You Only Have To Show Him Something And He Can Do It")

Project Herzog Part III, his best films (14 of them) here.

Project Herzog Part IV, his worst films (five of them) here.

And the rest, in chronological order:


Herakles (1962)

A student film basically, by a film-maker who never went to film school.  Mixing footage of body-builders with stock footage, the joke is that these modern-day He-Men can't possibly be as manly as the classical hero of the title.  Among the stock footage we see a pile of corpses from the 1955 Le Mans car racing disaster.  Get it?  Funny!


The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz (1966)

His first narrative film, a group of young men randomly find some military uniforms and weapons.  As a joke they put on the gear and instantly turn from carefree hipsters to bloodthirsty soldiers.  Obvious anti-war themes, with a deranged officer telling us "even defeat is better than no war."  Surprisingly mature, very much worth your time.


Signs of Life (1968)

His first feature.  A relatively straightforward, albeit quirky, anti-war film focusing on a group of Nazi soldiers in occupied Greece.  One of them comes upon a field filled with (desecrated by?) windmills and goes insane.  Herzog was perfectly capable of making mainstream work and thankfully, he soon decided not to.  Excellent Greek folk music for the soundtrack.


Last Words (1968)

Filmed at the same time and place as Signs of Life, this very short film is based around a man who constantly goes around claiming that he does not want to speak.  The best part of the movie is, again, the Greek folk music played throughout.  Also very strange direction from Herzog, who makes his actors often repeat their own lines of dialogue.


Precautions Against Fanatics (1969)

A short film shot at a race course, where Herzog interviews people who train horses.  Of course, they walk around trees for two or three days non-stop.  They eat too much garlic.  Herzog describes this film as a "practical joke" but it's one I'm too stupid to get.  His first use of color film.

"it might interfere with my aim"

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly theme live, Danish National Symphony Orchestra

I always loved his electric guitar lines the most -- so simple, so wickedly effective.

R.I.P. Ennio Morricone, who scored my favorite movie of all time in addition to a ton of other great work.  He was working up until near his death, as far as I can tell.

Project Herzog Part IV: His Worst Work ("He'll Shit In His Pants!")

Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)

Even 50 years ago casting an all-dwarf cast must have raised some eyebrows.  And believe me, this is not a film exploring the dignity of the lives of little people.  It's an obscene farce -- something to do with a jail-break from an institution where the former director is now held prisoner himself.  A statement about authoritarianism then?  Well, sure, but one that also involves cannibal chickens, a bloated dead sow, and a monkey crucifixion and procession.  Ends with the grating, satanic laughter of one of the inmates cheering on a shitting camel.  As mentioned, this is Herzog's scapegoat.  It is impossible to believe he made this within a year of his humanist masterpieces Handicapped Future and Land of Silence and Darkness.  Demonic excess.  Casual animal cruelty.  Pure obscenity.  A drunken food fight for good measure.


Queen of the Desert (2015)

A perfect example of just how bad later Herzog feature films can be.  How do we waste the genuine talents of Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson, and Damian Lewis?  By making a borderline parody of a Merchant-Ivory film.  Some beautiful shots and nice costumes though.


The Wild Blue Yonder (2005)

Not the only picture where the background story is more interesting than the final product.  Herzog's only foray into sci-fi, he mixes in stock footage of underwater exploration and shots from an actual Space Shuttle mission to tell the story of an alien who comes to Earth with a warning.  And this was actually the original plot to an earlier documentary, Fata Morgana (1971).  It didn't work there.  It doesn't work here.  Any space nerd knows the shuttle isn't capable of getting out of low earth orbit, duh.  Shots of Slab City are always interesting though.


My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)

With any other director, Michael Shannon is a pretty good actor.  With Herzog, he seems to have just swallowed a handful of quaaludes.  Another colossal waste of talent (Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny) this isn't even a murder mystery -- we know who did it from the start.  A very bad joke involving flamingos is the climax.  Produced by David Lynch, just because.


Salt and Fire (2016)

More bad Michael Shannon.  Something about a volcano that threatens the entire world, but also environmental degradation that led to his two children being blinded.  Scientists run around doing science things.  Terrorists do the same.  I am not ashamed to say I have no fucking clue what the actual plot of this one was beyond the above.  Painful and soporific at the same time.

Because Korea

To recap, my five sections were done entirely online this past semester.  And from the beginning my boss has stressed that our (online) quizzes, midterm, and final should be relatively easy.  This is in no small part because across Korea, students and parents are complaining about paying full tuition for largely online courses.

So I came in to the office Thursday, only for my boss to complain that I was about to give too many As.

He's usually a good egg, but I'm spending a happy weekend not thinking about him at all.

As for next semester, it's 50-50 whether or not students return.  I'm guessing we'll have some come back, but continue online for non-essential things like, oh I don't know, English.  (There is no English major available at my school, and I'm fine with that.)

Suffice it to say, if Korea isn't going back to 100% this September there's no way the US or UK should.  They will of course due to politics, and within a week major classroom outbreaks will ensue.

Balloon Battles Over Korea

At the border of North and South Korea, a propaganda / psy ops battle rages:

"A South Korean activist group released balloons containing anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border in the dead of night on Monday, in defiance of the South Korean government’s attempts to prevent such acts amid heightened tensions with North Korea.  

Park Sang-hak, head of the organization Fighters for a Free North Korea, said six members of his group launched 20 balloons containing half a million leaflets, 500 books advertising the success of South Korea’s capitalist system, 2,000 one dollar bills and 1,000 memory cards across the border towards the North from a secluded location in Paju, Gyeonggi, from 11 p.m. to midnight.  

 One of those balloons was discovered stuck on trees on the banks of a stream in Hongcheon County, Gangwon, by police Tuesday afternoon.

 'In order to evade [South Korean] police surveillance, I trained members unaccustomed to dispatching leaflets to send the flyers,' Park announced, before delivering a tirade condemning the Moon Jae-in administration for attempting to silence defector groups from speaking out."

As a liberal president rules South Korea, the current government is trying to ease tensions between the two countries to foster talks.  Right-wingers (some of whom are actually defectors from North Korea) aren't having any of it, and are planning to continue sending over their Freedom Balloons.  Meanwhile, South Korean border residents live in fear of a retaliatory strike from the North.

Project Herzog Part III: His Best Work ("What a Pity You Can't See the Colors!")

Grizzly Man (2005)

Is nature the great comforter of humanity, or the inevitable destroyer of it?  The answer is "yes."  Timothy Treadwell is an obviously troubled guy, but Herzog takes him absolutely seriously as both someone to be admired as a hero, and pitied as a lunatic.  Also interesting that Herzog admits that Treadwell himself has great talent as a fellow film-maker.  The late scene where Herzog tells Treadwell's friend to destroy the audio recording of his and his girlfriend's final moments -- iconic.


Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)

Is haunting the right word?  Certainly not joyous, but not at all morose either.  Herzog simply films some of the first known human paintings in a cave in France.  The music and sound design are absolutely stunning.  Also, his only film shot in 3-D (and apparently his final one).


Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

I'll admit I'm partial to stories about isolated places like Antarctica (thanks, H.P. Lovecraft) but once again Herzog more than delivers.  Simplicity is the key -- he points the camera at a group of misfit scientists and academics, chefs and engineers and divers, and asks them why they've chosen to spend significant amounts of time in such an isolated, even deadly place, away from family and friends.  The answers are varied, but most of them agree life here is in many ways more edifying than anything the modern world has to offer.  The star of the movie though is, of course, a doomed but freedom-loving penguin.


La Soufriere -- Waiting for an Inevitable Disaster (1977)

An early film and a short one that neatly encapsulates all of Herzog's concerns -- the violence of nature, the fleetingness of human creations (such as entire cities), the embrace of danger in the form of an active volcano that could blow at any moment.  The streets are empty, but no small number of TVs and radios are still on, making for a very strange sort of apocalyptic music.  At a brisk 30 minutes, a perfect gateway drug.