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!

"a bad joke or a good memory"

"The only thing promised in this world is that it will, oftentimes, be something that makes living seem impossible.  And I hope, then, that a child who blessedly knows less of the world's evils decides to laugh with his friends in a place that reaches your ears.  I hope it carries you back to the fight, as it has done for me.  Joy, in this way, can be a weapon -- that which carries us forward when we have been beaten back for days, or months, or years.

And what a year 2016 was.  Oh, friends, those of you who are still with us, what a year we survived together.  We are not done burying our heroes before we are asked to bury our friends.  Our mourning is eclipsed by a greater mourning.  I know nothing that will get us through this beyond whatever small pockets of happiness we make for each other in between the rage and the eulogies and the marching and the protesting and the demanding to be seen and accounted for.  I know nothing except that this grief is a river carrying us to another new grief, and along the way, let us hold a space for a bad joke or a good memory.  Something that will allow us to hold our breath under the water for a little bit longer.  Let the children have their world.  Their miraculous, impossible world where nothing hurts long enough to stop time.  Let them have it for as long as it will hold them.  When that world falls to pieces, maybe we can use whatever is left to build a better one for ourselves."

--Hanif Abdurraqib, "Surviving On Small Joys" from They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

If you're interested in a collection of essays that will simultaneously make you understand why the rise of Trump is worse than you think, why you should take Carly Rae Jepsen's infectious pop more seriously, why Allen Iverson is more important than Michael Jordan, and why Johnny Cash and Vanilla Ice have a lot in common, this is the book for you.

It's Racism, Stupid Part Two

An American who was adopted from South Korea 40 years ago (Korean "foreign adoption boom"), who is married and has kids in the U.S., has been deported back to South Korea because Trump:

"Crapser’s case also highlights the shaky legal status of possibly thousands of South Korean adoptees in the United States whose parents may have failed to get them citizenship, potentially leaving them vulnerable to deportation if they acquire a criminal record in a country that’s becoming increasingly aggressive about going after undocumented immigrants.

Crapser, who was named Shin Seong-hyeok by his Korean mother, is one of five adoptees who the Seoul government confirms now live in South Korea after being deported from the United States. Several of the deportees have reportedly dealt with mental health issues and served jail time in South Korea for assault and other crimes.

Activists say the South Korean government has done a poor job tracking deported adoptees and that the real number is almost certainly larger. Officials wouldn’t provide details about the other deportees."

This is cruelty and white supremacism, pure and simple.  Crapser has brought the first lawsuit against a Korean adoption agency and while very much an uphill battle, here's hoping he wins.  It's beyond belief that international adoption agencies can operate without any mechanism to ensure the adoptees have full citizenship in their target countries.

In Lighter News, This Is Actually A Thing In South Korea

Dear Korea:

Stop trying to make fruit and whipped cream sandwiches happen.

They are not going to happen.

— Winter Wonder James (@wetcasements) January 23, 2019

It's Racism, Stupid

Here's a blog post from right after Trump got elected in November 2016, with a picture of the front page of The Chosun Ilbo, a conservative South Korean newspaper.  The translation is "Angry Whites, America Overthrown."

Here are a pack of Trump Youth in D.C. this past weekend surrounding, harassing, and terrorizing a Native American vet who was performing a song of remembrance.  As mentioned on The Splinter, "it's the smile that stays with you."

I can only add that while a right-wing South Korea paper called out Trump for what he was two years ago -- a product of potent and thoroughly toxic racism and white identity politics, the American media is still flailing and throwing out garbage excuses of "economic anxiety" for why a pack of rich, privileged young white men from a tony private school felt safe and assured in threatening and trying to silence a much older man of color.

Because it's racism, stupid.  It always has been and always will be.

Eating For The Planet

Going vegetarian or even vegan used to be considered as promoting a greener, healthier individual lifestyle.  With global warming coming in faster than anyone ever imagined, it now may be a moral imperative to save the planet and human civilization as well:

"'The planetary health diet is based on really hard epidemiological evidence, where researchers followed large cohorts of people for decades,' said Marco Springmann at Oxford University and part of the commission. 'It so happens that if you put all that evidence together you get a diet that looks similar to some of the healthiest diets that exist in the real world.'

The report acknowledges the radical change it advocates and the difficulty of achieving it: 'Humanity has never aimed to change the global food system on the scale envisioned. Achieving this goal will require rapid adoption of numerous changes and unprecedented global collaboration and commitment: nothing less than a Great Food Transformation.'”

My New Year's resolution was to cut down on meat and go up on fruit and veg intake.

And I'm not sure if there's a harder place to do this than in South Korea.  Especially outside of more progressive cities like Seoul, vegetarianism just isn't happening.  Daegu has a couple of vegan joints with mediocre food and terrible service that happen to be run by a literal cult, so that doesn't help much either.  Indeed, the idea of a "salad" as a whole meal unto itself rather than a side-dish is anathema.

Baby steps, I guess.  There is a really good juice bar near my office, and I've come to like plain tofu with kimchi on top for a quick and very cheap lunch or dinner.  (If we're getting technical, kimchi is not vegetarian, but I think the food gods will forgive me if it's that or a can of Spam.)

So like everyone and everything else, I'm workin' on it.

Where To Find The Good Stuff

DABDA, "Youth"

Kind of Sea and Cake-ish with some really excellent vocals and drums.

I used to hate K-pop.  These days, I find some of it tolerable if not perfectly disposable.  There is a lot of Korean hip-hop that I like, once you can ignore Psy.  That said, here's a great Youtube series featuring a ton of great South Korean indie-rock, sorta-jazz, electro, and even some experimental stuff: Onstage.

Highly recommended.

Dance Hall Crashers

Can you copyright an ancient dance?  A South Korea dance troupe thinks they can, and the ensuing Intellectual Property battle is just beginning:

"Lee Hyuk-ryeol, Ubong’s son-in-law and the head of Ubong Lee Mae-bang Art Company, argues that the reason the organization registered copyrights for the dances was the 'preservation of the original' and to make 'clear recognition of the original creator' when Ubong’s dances are being taught and performed. However, the Society for the Preservation of Ubong Lee Mae-bang’s Dance claimed it was 'the beginning of seeking profit.' 

The National Dance Company of Korea was the first organization to find itself having to deal with the repercussions of the copyright. The money first became an issue. The company’s successful show 'The Banquet' features various traditional dances including Ogomu as part of the performance. After last year’s performances of 'The Banquet,' the National Dance Company of Korea is said to have received a fine for copyright violation worth 9 million won ($8,000). However, Lee denied charging the National Dance Company of Korea for copyrights, arguing that his art company only insisted on specifying the original creator of some of the dances in the show’s program. Lee claims that the 'National Dance Company refuted my request by saying that they’ll pay the fine if we can prove that the dance is a ‘creative work.’ 

'We’ve never sought profit,' Lee claims, while the National Dance Company said they will 'put the decision on hold until the country’s dance industry makes a decision on whether Ogumo is a tradition or a creation.'”

My general opinion is that for the most part South Korea would benefit from stronger and stricter I.P. laws in general.  However, this sounds more like straight-up abuse of the entire concept.