This Is Just To Say

This morning with my adult students we warmed up with the expression "Live fast, die young."

Note: this expression resonates in no single way with Koreans over the age of 30.

How Not To Go Insane, Maybe

I'm in this weird state where I must read online news to follow the clown-car shit-show that is Trumpolini, and I mustn't because it literally makes me depressed and angry and unwilling to leave the house.

Anyhow, if you're feeling any of the same emotions, Open Culture remains a wellspring of sanity and creativity in a world of derp.

I've been nibbling through this series on the history of Islamic and Indian philosophy.

S'good.  There is still a lot worth defending and protecting in this world, believe it or not.

The Salt Is Real

"Zero" is the number of fucks I give about Trump supporters / Stein supporters / BernieBros who are about to lose their Obamacare.

— Baby New James (@wetcasements) January 5, 2017

"My eyes were red / the streets were bright"

Hamilton Leithauser and Rostam, "A 1000 Times"

I'll always be a huge fan of his former work in The Walkmen, but I just love the fact that Hamilton Leithauser is basically an unabashed crooner in a world of screamers and mumblers.

Screamers and mumblers are great!  But let's hear it for direct, full-throated human emotion!

Neat video too.

Be Very Afraid

Rick Perlstein on why Trump will be much worse for America, Americans, and the world than Nixon ever was:

"Donald Trump assembles enemies lists, too; his organs of cognition appear to be structured around the idea of revenge. There are Republicans who voted against him, like Senator Lindsey Graham. ('It’s so great our enemies are making themselves clear,' Trump surrogate Omarosa Manigault exulted, 'so that when we get to the White House, we know where we stand.') There are media organizations he claims have covered him unfairly, like The Washington Post. (Just as Nixon threatened to take away the broadcast licenses of television stations owned by the Post, Trump has vowed to prosecute Post owner Jeff Bezos for antitrust violations.) And it’s not hard to imagine that Trump’s list of targets will only grow longer as his power expands. Like Nixon, he has spent his entire life chasing the narcotic rush afforded by dominating others, the better to fill the void where a functioning soul ought to be.

But there are two key differences that set Trump apart from his predecessor in paranoia. First, his soul is sicker by miles than Nixon’s. And second, the surveillance apparatus he is about to inherit is far scarier than the one available to Nixon."

Alas, we all know that a Hillary presidency would have been just the same, if not worse, than Trumpolini's.  Susan Sarandon told me so!

Insert Ironical Uplifting Message Here

So, welcome to 2017.

Keep your head down.

Wear a helmet.

RIP Carrie Fisher

Music, cheer, talent, American national dignity --  is there anything 2016 won't take from us?

A Hero For Our Times

Koreans sure love them some drama when it comes to air travel.  Not too long back there was Nut-gate, where a high-ranking Korean Air exec lost her mind when she wasn't given a complimentary dish of nuts before takeoff.  Now, we have 80's pop-star Richard Marx (!) and his wife Daisy Fuentes (!!) saving a planeload of Korean passengers from a drunk asshole / "businessman":

"South Korea’s biggest airline has defended its staff after the US pop singer Richard Marx said he had helped restrain a violent passenger during a flight and accused the crew of being 'ill trained' to deal with incidents of air rage.

Marx, who had several hits in the 1980s and 90s, said he and his wife, the TV host Daisy Fuentes, were on a Korean Air flight from the Vietnamese capital Hanoi to Seoul on Tuesday when a male passenger assaulted the person sitting next to him.

After female cabin attendants spent four hours attempting to subdue the man, Marx, 53, and another male passenger stepped in and tied him up with a rope."

My first thought before watching the (widely available) videos of the incident was, of course Korean Air stewardesses couldn't restrain a crazy person.  They weigh 90 pounds at most soaking wet, and are hired for their looks above and beyond anything else.  (This is true of most Asia-based carriers.)

Granted, US carriers are complete dumpster fires when it comes to customer service but at least they wouldn't take more than a few minutes to incapacitate, one way or another, a drunken dickhead.

The fact that this guy was allowed to literally terrorize an entire flight for four hours, the stewardesses were helpless, and the captain apparently did nothing makes me wonder if paying a few hundred dollars more for objectively better service on Korean Air or Asiana is ever worth it.

Oh, and the best part -- the guy was let free by the police because he was too drunk.  As far as I know, South Korea is the only country on earth where being a drunken asshole is one of the best legal defenses you can mount.

And the symbolism of a stewardess holding a taser but not knowing how to use it is about as Korean as it gets.  Appearance always trumps actual competence here, especially when it comes to matters of public safety.

"still spell America with a triple-K"

Run The Jewels, "A Christmas Fucking Miracle"

This is all I got.  But this video is everything.

Annus Horribilis

George Michael dead at 53.  Carrie Fisher "stable" after a heart attack.

Christmas is a time to mend wounds and look forward to a better 2017 but somehow these days my primary feeling is simply one of mental exhaustion.

I'm fucking tired.  Other than family and close friends I really just want as little to do with the world as possible.  Other than work and exercise I really just want to stay in and watch movies.

I can't even read newspapers any more, speaking as someone who's a life-long news junkie.

And it's only going to get worse.

"Madonna. And Slayer."

My attempt to catch up with 2016's film offerings continues apace.  I finally saw Green Room, the progressive-hardcore-band-gets-taken-hostage-by-Neo-nazi-rednecks that America had been desperate for and I liked it a lot.  But I wouldn't recommend it.

The set-up is fantastic -- a gigging hardcore band is down on its luck and agrees to play a bill with "mostly" not racist skinheads.  Things quickly go wrong, and within 15 minutes you're thrown into a tightly paced, hellishly claustrophobic nightmare that basically takes up the rest of the movie.  The performances are mostly quite good, with Captain Picard (!) playing the sadistic Nazi ring-leader.

But -- my god it's violent.  And the violence is shot in a very matter-of-fact, naturalistic way.  It just sort of happens without warning and without much of a justification.  (If I never see a box cutter again I'll be a happy boy.)  There are also dogs trained to eat human flesh.  They are arguably some of the main characters in the film.

Obviously, this was not an easy film to watch.  And while I should have known what I was getting into, I would have loved to have gotten to know the (very likable) main characters a bit more before, well, things go down as you'd expect if you were held hostage by racist skinhead hillbillies.  There's some very dark humor as well, which I'm always in favor of.

I really enjoyed it.  But please don't blame me if you lose sleep after watching it in all of its ultra-grim glory.