Nine Thoughts About Stranger Things 3! With Spoilers!

I thought Stranger Things 3 was pretty close to perfect, and by perfect I mean finding a balance between outright fan service and solid writing which offered both closure and some good prospects for a fourth season.  Some thoughts:

1)  This felt a lot more action-oriented than the previous seasons, and that was OK.  They were juggling a ton of characters and while the first few episodes were slow, the fast pace of everything else felt justified and not at all rushed.

2)  There were plenty of emotional moments, but one that stood out for me was Will tearing down Fort Byers, "putting aside childish things" so to speak as his friends discover girls.  I had many a feel with this scene.

3)  Something I didn't like: while using music well is a powerful technique, they really overdid it here.  Every damn scene doesn't need a cutesie 80s gratuitous musical cue.  A few would have been awesome, but it became tedious and predictable.  (Jackie Wilson's "Higher and Higher" is from 67, natch.)

4)  I really want Steve to find a nice girl and settle down.  He's earned it.

5)  Robin was great.  Erica was great.  Max felt a little underdeveloped, even though she got plenty of screen-time this season.  She grieves after Billy sacrifices himself but it felt kind of rote.

6)  As good as this season was, part of me kind of wants it to end here -- Hopper dead, the kids growing up and moving on, everyone fully experiencing "the hurt" of the final letter.

7)  I get that part of the show's charm comes in the form of 80's pop-culture references, but Grigori the Russian hit-man was a little too on-the-nose in referencing The Terminator.

8)  Nancy is bad-ass, as always.  The actual NRA is a terrorist organization, but if she started her own gun club I'd join in a heartbeat.

9)  As a life-long nerd myself who used to play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons, you'd think I'd relate to one of the "core" kids the most (Will, Mike, Lucas, Dustin).  But Steve -- saying stupid things, the faded glory, multiple romantic failures, but very occasionally rising to greatness when needed?

Yeah, I'm definitely a Steve.

"Even Harvard Makes Mistakes"

Just hearing "Harvard Fencing Coach"makes me want to polish the nearest guillotine.

— Winterfell Barista James (@wetcasements) July 10, 2019

Context.

"Vous étiez l'éternité, vous n'êtes que du passé"

Stereolab, "Parsec" live 2001

This is a genuinely freaky live version of what's probably my favorite song of theirs.

I didn't realize Stereolab were reissuing their catalog, but it's great news.  Emperor Tomato Ketchup and Dots and Loops are up next -- very much the sweet spot of their career.

Spoiler Free Spiderman Review!

Spiderman: Far From Home was pretty good, but the plot felt a bit too complicated for a Spidey flick.  Tom Holland and Zendaya were great though, as were Jon Favreau and Marissa Tomei.  (Why isn't she in more stuff lately?)  The lazy first half was made up for by a much stronger second.

3.5/5 web shooters!

USA!

It was awesome to watch the US women lift the World Cup early this morning (my time).  Their take-no-shit-from-anyone-especially-the-Orange-One is greatly appreciated.

"eat that steak"

Korean millenials face many of the same challenges that American ones do -- a sluggish job market (for full time work, at least), increasing costs for education and housing, and more generally a sense that they'll never do as well as their parents did.  So are they overlooked and under appreciated, or just wasteful spenders?  Enter "fuck-it expenses":

"Loosely translated to 'fuck-it expense,' the term is a compound noun combining shibal (a swearword for frustration) and biyong (expense). It first appeared in late 2016, with the earliest tweet about it referring to 'an expense that I would not have spent if I weren’t under stress,' such as 'an impulsive food delivery or a cab ride.' The post caught on, and the term was named “neologism of the year” by several South Korean media outlets.

A shibal biyong is an expense that might seem unnecessary but that helps you get through a bad day. It’s the $20 you splurge for a cab home instead of taking the subway after you’ve been denied a promotion or the comforting but expensive sushi you buy after you’ve been berated by your boss. The term implies that you might as well make yourself happy right now because your prospects in the long term seem bleak. Buy that nice coat, because you’ll never get on the housing ladder. Eat that steak, because you’ll never save up enough to retire."

Meanwhile the Korean demographic crisis continues unabated.

"Oh, but things just ain't the same"

X, "Fourth of July"

I have some genuinely great memories of July 4th growing up in the DC area.  The downtown DC fireworks were hardly the only choice -- I remember the University of Maryland had some pretty great displays as well.  But I can remember two times -- maybe three -- when we made the trip to the "official" display.  And they were great.  Pretty sure Bush the Elder was president during one of the events, and not a whiff of partisanship was there -- just people out enjoying their three-day weekend.

And now of course, like everything he comes into contact with, Trump has ruined yet another perfectly fine American tradition -- poisoned it on the altar of his bottomless ego.

Anyhow there aren't that many great American Fourth of July rock tunes but this is definitely one of them.  I'm finalizing my plans for America between the end of July and mid-August, and I'll probably catch the new Spiderman this weekend.

I only had one student call and complain about his grade.  That's a minor win as well.

Why Shouldn't Us Libs Responsibly Own More Guns?

Corey Pein on the rise of left-wing gun ownership:

"Consider the tense political climate in the Pacific Northwest, where Washington state Representative Matt Shea, a dough-faced Christian dominionist from Spokane, made news last year when his instructions on how to build a'holy army'that would kill 'all males' who refused to submit to biblical law leaked to the press. 'ssassination to remove tyrants is just, not murder,'he wrote. The tyrant he referred to was not Trump, of course, but the communists he imagined running the government. 


Such paranoid fantasies may be familiar to heavy consumers of YouTube and Reddit, but watching them transposed on to the structures of governance is a novelty. As a result, many leftists and even some liberals are beginning to reconsider their feelings about firearms, joining a loose amalgamation of gun groups, from John Brown Gun Clubs (which take their name from the abolitionist) to the Pink Pistols (an LGBTQ group), Liberal Gun Club, and Socialist Rifle Association. Some of these organizations are moderate and traditionalist, others radical and revolutionary. But all share one implicit goal: to normalize firearms ownership and training among liberals. Some of their members hope such efforts will at least make Republicans think twice before attempting a massacre."

I'm absolutely fine with this.  Fascism isn't coming to America, it has already arrived as far as I'm concerned.  Unsurprisingly, many fascists have already infiltrated the government as well.  The murder of Heather Heyer by a literal Nazi was no accident.

Buying and learning to use a firearm seems like a perfectly measured response.  I'd think twice if I had kids, but it's still an option.  Lest we forget before it became a terrorist organization, the NRA really did stand for responsible gun education.  (When my dad decided to teach me how to shoot he ordered some safety manuals -- free! -- and made me read them and memorize them before he took me to the range for the first time.)

Let's be brutally honest here -- Trump is a delusional incompetent.  But the next Republican president might actually have his shit together, and the toxic fantasies of White Supremacism will come even closer to fulfillment.

"so unfazed by the assholes of the world now"

Living as I do in South Korea I don't tend to do much for the Fourth of July, but this year I'm going to continue happily cheering on the US women's World Cup squad.  As The Orange Pussy-Grabber might literally destroy the Lincoln Memorial to satiate his bloated ego, have some fun with Megan Rapinoe's girlfriend, WNBA basketball star Sue Bird, throwing well-deserved shade:

"And I think Megan’s sensitivity is what drives her to fight for others. I think it’s what drove her to take a knee. The Megan you’re seeing now? It’s the stronger version of the one who knelt in the first place. All the threats, all the criticism, all the fallout — coming out on the other side of that is what makes her seem so unfazed by the assholes of the world now. 

I think in trying to help others, Megan has cemented who she is."

I'll stay up late Saturday night to watch the US taken on Sweden or Netherlands.  It should be a blast.

Teacher Of The Year

My final grades have been in the college computer system for over a week now, but this week students get to call me up and plead for mercy.  Granted, sometimes I do make stupid data entry mistakes and need to update their final score.  But usually it's just a handful of students who either a) know they fucked up royally by missing the maximum number of classes, and regale me with stories of emergency hospital visits or dead grandma funerals (why not tell me a month ago when it actually happened?) or b) grade-grubbers who want their A- kicked up to an A (hey, at least these students seem to care).

Anyhow, if you ever teach English at a Korean college or university this is our version of "desk-warming."  There are far worse fates but I'm also reduced to sitting in my office waiting for students to bring me phantom letters from phantom hospitals regarding phantom medical conditions.

Good times.

Entering The 21st Century

I've had my new (owned) smartphone for about four days now and still haven't dropped it in the toilet.#lifegoals#winning

— Winterfell Barista James (@wetcasements) July 2, 2019