March 29, 2009

Absolutely Fabulous

It is nearly 3 AM and Nicole needs to sleep, and that's probably a good idea for me as well, so this will have to be brief.

The start of my first day in Seoul: was put into a police car.

The end of my first day in Seoul: schmoozed at a private party for the people behind Seoul Fashion Week at WooBar inside W Hotel, the ritziest venue in the entire city.

~*~*~*~
ADDENDUM [March 30]
Hmmm maybe I should explain that a lil' bit. No, Nicole & I were not arrested. Mr. Lee, the owner of the guest house where we're staying, gave us the name of a famous restaurant near Gyeongbok Palace and some vague directions, but once we got out of the subway and hit the streets we weren't all that sure of how to get there. Fortunately, Mr. Lee also wrote down the name of it in Korean, so we walked up to a police box and showed the paper and put on our best confused-foreigner faces. An officer motioned us out the door, so we figured he was just going to point us in the right direction, but no, he drove us there in his squad car instead.

Our streak of spectacular tourist luck lasted through the rest of the day and night, and has in fact continued on into today, but that's for another post. Last night culminated in our meeting one of Nicole's friends from our semester abroad in Japan and one of our Notre Dame friends, for catching up and drinks. We did not find out until the last minute - while we were in transit to the meeting place - that we would actually be meeting at the W Hotel, and that its famously schmancy WooBar was technically exclusively reserved for a Seoul Fashion Week party.

However, being the classy ladies that we are, we strutted right up to the front door, handed our coats to a smartly-dressed young lad, and assured the woman guarding the bar's perimeter that yes, we were guests of the party. I had a mojito so fresh and crisp I was sipping spearmint leaves through my straw. The four of us sat in egg-shaped chairs with techno-pop washing over us from the giant marble of a DJ booth in the corner. Probably the most hilariously surreal thing, though (I mean aside from the fact that we actually got into this place to begin with), was the giant, person-sized game of Jenga being played at the far end of the bar, next to a bay window with a spectacular hilltop view of Seoul.

At the opposite end of the social matrix, this morning I made friends with one of the clerks at a neighborhood grocer's down the road. I'm pretty sure the nashi he hand-selected for me was at least as big as, if not bigger than, the "large" ones being sold for 2,000 won, and I was only charged 1,000, which was the price listed for the "small" pears. Right now 100 yen ('bout a dollar) equals about 1,400 won. So, yeah, food, and everything else, is incredibly inexpensive here in one of the largest cities in the world.

March 28, 2009

Seoul Food

...I couldn't resist.

The first thing we saw when we got through customs and out into Incheon Airport was a Baskin Robbins. The second thing was a scam artist posing as a taxi driver, and he saw us right away, too. The next time someone comes up to Nicole and I and demands to know where we're going, we're speaking French back to them.

In Korea every other word sounds like Japanese, but the syllables are all slurred and the writing is loopy. The TV is still weirdtacular, though. There are lights everywhere in Seoul, the bridges are illuminated, underlit, and across the river there is a stretch of buildings and rainbow pinpricks that just goes on and on. On the sidewalks there are people who don't walk in one direction or on one side and vendors who sell fried things, flowers, plastic toys that light up. It's like Tokyo except it's better because it's not Tokyo - there are busy streets with no crosswalks, no signals telling everybody when it is and is not acceptable to set foot on asphalt, in fact you can't not walk in the roads sometimes and it's wonderful to have to be aware of cars rather than beware of them - and it's like New York except I've never been to New York but I just get the feeling that that city is trying to reach me through this one.

We ate home-cooked kimchi soup and bibimbop at a mom&pop place just down the street from our very amazing guest house. Our host walked us there himself and told the proprietess what we wanted to eat. Her husband took pictures of me on his cell phone from across the room - that was refreshingly shameless, and it made me smile. She mimed to me that I shouldn't eat too much, because I'm wee and my stomach might hurt, but I finished most of a bowl the size of my head anyway because it was delicious.

Note: I admit that I wanted desperately the eat at the Outback Steakhouse or even the Papa Johns that we saw along the walk to the guest house, but Nicole, being the best friend that she is, talked me out of it. Still, if I get a hankering for pizza or black bean sauce, those two are fair game.

There is a small neighborhood market called "Lucky Sale Mart" a two-minute walk towards the station, and they have POMEGRANATES. Today after I see the palace and the historical district and the art galleries, I am coming back, buying a pomegranate, and eating the hell out of it!

Exploring time. Pictures will surely follow.

March 23, 2009

Mini-update, bigass music rant

Unexpectedly had a four-day-weekend thanks to Mother Nature blessing me with an overabundance of springtime germs. I felt near death on Wednesday night, but I felt mostly human again by Saturday so I spent the weekend-weekend shopping & nerding out with a friend. I gave Japan my money, and it not only gave me fantabulous finds at its hippie shops, but my new favorite designer name in the whole wide world (this includes tokidoki, because yeah my new favorite's prices are still ridiculous, but not quite that ridiculous): drug store's. "It is a symbol of happiness beloved by girls," according to a lot of their overpriced t-shirts. Their mascots are little pigs, and they appear in every iteration imaginable, including but not limited to: samurai pig, noodle-shop pig, viking pig, Rastafarian-inexplicably-riding-a-Hindu-elephant pig, Harlem Globetrotters pigs, The Beatles' Abbey Road album cover pigs, and these little doods on the left here. HELLS YES that is Indiana Jones pig and Sean Connery pig. I got a surprisingly-not-overpriced backpack that is most definitely a direct play on LeSportsac's tokidoki handbag aesthetic but with viking pigs and "Helmetons" written on the button-logo instead of "LeSportsac." It is made of awesome and win ♥

In the next 3 days I wanna get some of the dust out of my apartment and take a crack at revamping my first-year students' classes so that they can actually get something out of them this year besides "I'mu fine sank you." Then I'm going to Korea.

What follows are some thoughts on "Nightmare Revisited," which I bought at Tower Records in Suzuka this weekend. All those in favor of NOT sitting through my musings about The Nightmare Before Christmas, contemporary bands, and two successive generations of movie-goers, stop reading nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn...
...ow.

Okay, I wrote the bulk of this while it was still very fresh in my mind, so forgive me if the transitions aren't obvious because my brain does that lateral-thinking thing an awful lot and I don't notice it because, well, it's my brain. To get right to the point (that's a lie), I don't at all care for any of the songs that have anything to do with Jack (that's the truth). Yes, that very much includes The Polyphonic Spree's version of "Town Meeting Song." They, like the rest of the bands that were inexplicably chosen for Jack-related songs, just end up sounding like parodies of themselves, and not in the good kinda way. About the only performer of which I am unqualified to make that assertion is Sparklehorse (haven't heard any of his [their?] other songs), but judging by the rest of the indie-pop outfits on this album I feel I can make an educated reach and include him (them?) too.

Something I should make clear: I am not simply singling out bands like All-American Rejects and Plain White T's because they happen to fall within more or less the same flavor of music. DeVotchKa did an amazing job on the overture, and sonically he is worlds away from Marilyn Manson, who did wonderful things with "This Is Halloween." The reason bands like Manson and DeVotchKa and Stars work for this collection is because they can stay true to their own sound - and, of course, knowingly spoof themselves; I mean, Marilyn Manson, THEE Marilyn Manson, singing in wee-tiny-witchy voices and going "whee!"??? I laughed pretty hard. The man is completely self-aware, acting as his own caricature here, and has a ton of fun with it - while also remaining true to the stories and emotions embedded in these songs.

By contrast, Plain White T's doing "Poor Jack" just sounds like Plain White T's doing their best Danny Elfman impression. And admittedly it's pretty spot-on. But if you're merely going to copy the original song exactly, how is it "revisiting" that song? What elements of your band, besides the name, are you adding in?

Flyleaf goes to the opposite extreme and does Flyleaf-sings-a-song-called-What's-This. Not Flyleaf reinterprets "What's This" from The Nightmare Before Christmas. I simply cannot integrate those two songs, because they are separate animals. When I listen to those vocals, to that instrumentation, I don't hear wonder and delight at making new discoveries in life, at breaking out of your own little world and taking joy in the diversity of experience.

I hear all the teenagers and twenty-somethings who did not see this movie as eight-year-olds. They saw it in their teens and twenties, because it has Halloweeny stuff in it, and because they mistakenly felt it validated their self-absorbed morbidity. They saw this film when they were too old to naively accept the fantastical aspects of death and monsters as commonplace within this particular fictional world - they had already been taught that those things are in fact taboo no matter what the context. So they did not understand that Jack's return to Halloween Town as the Pumpkin King was not, in fact, a triumph of their subculture - for Jack, being spooky is the norm, a regular 9-5 job, and thus for him it is a return to traditional values, albeit with an enriched worldview and renewed inspiration thanks to his having briefly experienced a different way of life. Let's not forget with near-disastrous results. If anything The Nightmare Before Christmas is a pretty straight-up cautionary tale about throwing yourself into alternative lifestyles or attempting to emulate different cultural practices without first gaining some actual knowledge and understanding of them, god forbid.

Granted, I acknowledge that the songs, in a way, simply embody a different generation's experience of the story, one that is not wrong in any meaningful sense. It is what it is. Jack can be a lonely guy with a stagnated career having a quarter-life crisis, and he can also be a whiny emo kid. I guess I just can't help but bemoan the connections that later and broodier audiences were missing out on due to their inability to see past their mascara and pink hair extensions. And also Flyleaf-chick's voice gets REALLY irritating after just a minute and a half. (Apologies to Jenni, and nothing against mascara or pink hair extensions - they are really quite awesome when given into the right hands, i.e. not-most-15-year-olds).

I'm on the fence with Amy Lee. I have mad respect for her vocal talents, and she captures Sally's voice perfectly, but...yeah, but. Fiona Apple. Her voice, and her music, gives Sally the little spark of moxie that we always knew was there, but gets drowned in the fatalism of "Sally's Song." I can listen to Fiona Apple's rendition and not feel at all guilty over it. In fact I'm going to go dig that up right now.

P.S. -- Dear Notre Dame Class of 2009: I hope your more conservative elements are at least mature enough to quitchyer bitchin' about having PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA as your commencement speaker. To those wet blankets who keep fueling what I imagine is by now a raging Viewpoint wank-fest: freaking loosen up and enjoy the most awesomest commencement in the history of ever. Oh, and have fun with your subsequent Bush-begotten lack of employment. Neener neener. Love, Nikki.

March 15, 2009

Happy belated Pi Day

It is worth noting, too, that perhaps organic forms are beautiful to us and the systemic biologist can find aesthetic satisfaction in the differences between related organisms simply because the differences are due to modulations of communication, while we ourselves are both organisms who communicate and whose forms are determined by constellations of genetic messages. This is not the place, however, for such a revision of aesthetic theory. An expert in the theory of mathematical groups could make a major contribution in this field.
--Gregory Bateson, "The Group Dynamics of Schizophrenia," Steps to an Ecology of Mind



...If I let words like that kindle love for a dead man, does that make me something of a necrophiliac?

March 13, 2009

Oh shi--

WHUT IT'S FRIDAY THE 13TH AGAIN??!? Wow, bonus round this year.

Today is actually a lot better than last Friday. Despite the fact that it is raining again, this time I have my new Tokidoki rainboots to keep my feet both dry and superfantastic. (Don't worry, I got them on Amazon for substantially cheaper than their October 2008 retail price. I think I can count on one hand the amount of times I've actually paid full-price for designer stuff...and I'm pretty sure that number is zero. I like having nice things, but I also like having more money left over when I get said nice things.)

AND I got chocolate and cookies for "White Day," an even sillier holiday than Valemtard's. The sole purpose of it is for Japanese guys to repay their chocolate-debt to the Japanese gals upon whose frail shoulders rest all of V-Day's gift-giving obligations in this country. But enough of my snark - free chocolate :D

Also, tomorrow I embark on another magical mystical journey to O-town. There are many, many good reasons why it is Chi-town's sister city and why I love it so, and this is just one among them. They have taken the concept of "baseball curse" and made it bizarre and amusing in ways that only Japan can really.

Oh, and in other news, Kim Jong Il has decided not to try and resume the Korean War until AFTER I get back from Seoul. I appreciate his consideration in this matter, but I still wish he would stop being a crazy mofo. Same goes for South Korea's president, too, honestly. Maybe if he and his buddies weren't such stingy bastards with the economic aid Kimmy would at least play nicer.

...I'm pretty sure the dood next to me just ate an entire bag of grape-jelly-filled rolls. For his lunch. Wow, Japan, you need an intervention for your bread problem.

March 8, 2009

My legs are not as tired as I thought they'd be

This weekend I went exploring, which I have not done in a long time because I spent the previous 4 weekends going to places that are not my town.

Yesterday I took the local train down to Where The Train Tracks End, because if you go any further you will plow straight into the Pacific Ocean. That place is called Kashikojima, and it is full of pearls and ise-ebi (lobster), and regular ebi (shrimp), too. The station is right next to the wharf and its jumble of shops, and it smells of kelp and sea salt.

Today I discovered the hill behind my apartment. I mean I'd always known it was there, and that I could walk along a portion of it to get to work faster, but only recently did I notice a kei-truck parked up on a rise of ground that upon further inspection proved to be an unpaved road of sorts. It branches off the old paved road that I walk along normally, which disappears beneath my school's baseball field. So today I decided that before I went to the store I'd see where that little dirt track leads. Turns out it just winds alongside the marsh behind the school grounds and dead-ends after you walk through a creepy clearing where I-don't-know-what goes on, and then an archway of new bamboo.

But there is a footpath that continues onward, into mystery and adventure. I didn't have my camera with me, but this wasn't the sort of exploring I could really do justice to using a camera. Anyone who visits me from now on, I am bringing you by the rough and unbeaten track up that hill. Except it will probably never again be this kind of cool, sunny, sleepy day in early spring when there aren't enough insects to be a bother and the animals are still lying low and nobody is working the tiered orchards planted up there and it's so quiet, that whole piece of the world just dozing.

Still, we're going for a hike.

The last bit of walking I did was along the river bank on my way home from the store. I guess since today was pretty warm and sunny a lot of the older neighborhood residents were camped out with big buckets and nifty contraptions made of either bamboo or plastic tubing and fine mesh. They were catching little fishies, like minnows except I dunno the Japanese version of minnows, scoopin' 'em up with the mesh traps. Given the things I've seen at the store, though, I can't say with any certainty whether they actually intend to use them as bait for bigger fish, or just eat the little guys. Maybe both.

March 6, 2009

eff.

Fuck you, low-pressure weather systems. FUCK. YOU.
You are not making my Friday any less shitty.

But this is. A lil' bit. Happy Premiere Day, The Watchmen movie. Please don't let Hollywood screw with Laurie's character too much.