It was the best show ever... seriously, I'm not lying.

(this is a heady crew at a DMB show. Notice the dude wearing an I heart Nuggets shirt.)
Last weekend I read a great interview with the director of a new Arctic Monkeys concert DVD. Besides giving homage to The Last Waltz, the Citizen Kane of concert docs, he made a great point about a terrible cliche in the genre. Crowd shots always kill the mood. "It's like you need to show proof that it was a good show," he said. I completely agree.

So many times i've been watching a favorite concert doc, the director makes a quick cut to some loser fan, and I totally lose my emotional connection for 10 seconds or so. Most people wouldn't mind, but I suppose most people aren't as critical as me. One of my big issues is that I know how ridiculous I look at shows. I can't dance, and at the same time, I'm totally over-involved in the moment. But the whole idea is to lose yourself. You don't want to worry anyone judging you, let alone somebody filming you for a DVD. I would be pissed.

To this day, I've never seen any crowd shot that I thought was either entertaining or worthwhile. Two of the best concert docs ever, The Last Waltz and Stop Making Sense, have almost no crowd shots. I think that plays a subliminal role in why they're both so revered. After all, you won't buy a "Rent" dvd that has crowd shots. You don't buy a "Les Mis" dvd that has crowd shots. Why should a concert dvd be any different?

Christmas in Korea: holiday as excuse.

Christmas day puts the USA at a standstill. You had better have a full fridge, because there is no chance you're grabbing a pizza on the 25th... anywhere. That is hardly the case in Korea.

In fact, I actually got a pizza from Dominos yesterday. In doing so I noticed a marked difference between the Korean and American executions of this wintry holiday. Life absolutely hustles along here regardless of Santa's presence. Most Koreans will tell you that Christmas is not really an important holiday to them. The country has a large Buddhist population who could give a crap about santa, and the day itself is not a uniquely Korean holiday like, say, Chuseok or the Lunar New year. For those reasons Christmas, in practice, is just an excuse to take a day off work and shop. And shop they did.

I went to grab a football at the local megastore/supermarket for a brisk toss on Ilsan beach. The store [Home Plus] is never empty, but I had never seen it as busy as it was. Families whizzed around with full carts everywhere the eye could see. I broke hard for the sports section and got out of there within 6 minutes. Any longer would have been trying.

In truth, it felt nice that life continued on around us yesterday. For many of the native teachers in Ulsan, it was our first Christmas away from home. So had life shut down, we would all have been confined to our tiny apartments, eating and drinking whatever nourishment we had lying around. It felt great to have some distraction. I can certainly say that it contributed to what was an amazing Christmas day (pictures forthcoming...)

So there you have it. Korean Christmas is, more or less, just one big excuse to hang up your work boots and buy a DVD player.

Man love.

Korea is a nation that fosters a serious sense of man love. There is none of this arch-agro, anti affection sentiment in the male population, like, for example, that which defines most American male relationships. Nope, it seems to me that men here love the fact that they're men, and have strong desires to congratulate each on the fact.

Men here have a very touch-centered nature. They seem to constantly grasp/graze/clasp each others shoulders, faces, upper legs, and of course, hands. Hugs are also a much more ornate practice in Korea. I've found that one thing separates a Western hug and a Korean hug: head placement. In the good old US of A, we guys usually give a stiff hug with lots of arm/chest action, with heads fully erect, staring over each other's shoulder. Korean men burrow their heads into the neck, which really emphasizes the emotional connection they share as gender compatriots. You must understand that American manhugs are not meant to be an emotional affair. After all, that would be decidedly wimpy.

Physical closeness is a trend that clearly begins at an early age with Korean men. Hand holding, hugging, and walking with arms-around-shoulders is a common sight with all my boy students. My favorite boy-love (that feels terrible to type) display goes like this. Two boy students will sit one in front of the other in a row, with the front boy sitting at an angle, and gently placing his hand on the desk and in the hand of the boy in back. It's important to also emphasize that these boys will be engaged in class, eyes on the board, but still in the throws of a casual hand hold.

Korean men often vocally embrace each other as well. Up front comments on another man's attractiveness are totally common here. I can't even begin to quantify the number of times small boys and grown men alike have openly called me "handsome." Now, I mention this not out of vanity, but because it is an experience that almost all my male friends share. American guys; just imagine meeting another dude on neutral terms, and him making casual observations about your physical appearance. You would be taken aback right? Well, it's all part of a general sense of frankness which is totally the norm.

It's invaluable to mention that, despite their physical openness, Korean men are absolutely macho, and homophobic more often than not. Though Korea is a generally modern nation, it is still socially conservative. I'm pretty sure you could count Korea's gay bars on one hand, and I doubt you could find any outside of Seoul. Furthermore, women here hardly get a fair shake.

Don't get me wrong, women work, they have agency in the dating world, and they have many of the same legal protections that western women do. But, for example, you would never see a woman principle. There is an enormous discrepancy in pay scale between the sexes that goes unchecked. It is improper for women to smoke cigarettes in public (they do it in bathrooms). It is improper for women to drink alcohol in the company of men outside of bars/clubs. It is almost unheard of for a woman to hold a prestigious leadership position in business or politics. This antiquated cultural sexism only facilitates rampant man love. It's like Korean men all believe they are part of some elite club, and must congratulate each other on their achievement.

I think there's nothing wrong with a little man love. Friendships are perhaps the most important relationships anyone can have, so why not feed them with a little TLC? I think that the American man's reticence to physically emote is born out of some misplaced sense of insecurity. As if there's any logical connection between wanting to hug a friend and fuck him? Come on, we're a little more advanced than that. Am I wrong my yankee brethren?

Hi, I think your Uggs are really fucking stupid.

If I don't miss college everyday, then it's fair to say that I miss it most days. However, there is one thing that I do not, nor will I ever miss about my collegiate experience: stop-and-chats. To me, stop-and-chats are amongst the most loathsome social niceties anyone could ever resign themselves to. They're like the social equivalent of placing your utensils on correct sides of the plate. Point is, who cares where your knife is in relation to your fucking burger? And who cares whether or not I want to know if your fucking week will be a "tough one" or not? Still, while I lament their practice I must admit that I took part in them. In fact, I took part often.

There's few things I regret more about my UVM career than my proclivity for engaging in stop-and-chats. Christ, I feel like Garfunkel writing a letter to Simon outlining how much he despised "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Everyone knows it takes two to play. Spiteful rhetoric aside, listen, I caved to the social expectation I "believed" were a part of the whole UVM "deal." Who knows, maybe my life here in Korea insulates me from those scenarios in which mindless gab is commonplace? Maybe that's what happens when you live in a place where you're surrounded by an alien language 4.5 days out of the week? If so, great. That means I have 9 more months of utilizing conversation as a valid form of intra-personal inquiry every time I choose to employ it. But that's a totally unreasonable situation if you consider the long term.

I'm sure the reality is that stop-and-chats will persist throughout the better part of my next several decades. Thus, I think I had better find a place where I can safely engage in "s.a.c.'s" and not feel feel as I've compromised my sense of social agency. There's nothing wrong with casually asking someone if their week is going well. It's a polite thing to do, and sometimes there's even information you can gain which comes to your advantage. Ok, so I hereby admit that I might ask you in passing how your week is. I won't love what I'm doing, though I surely won't hate it either. But here's the compromise: if you ask me, "what's up?" in April while wearing Uggs and looking generally offensive, my response will most likely be, "Oh hi, I think your Uggs are really fucking stupid."

Death, magic, and Christmas.

Christmas is everywhere, and with it, news of friends making the annual trek back to the homestead. For obvious reasons, I will not be among the masses sipping coffee with ma and pa on Christmas morning. I knew this would be the case back in August, but nevertheless, I'm painfully aware that my absence on the 25th for the first of its kind. Now I'm sure that my absence doesn't effect me nearly as much as it does my mother, but I'm certainly not above admitting that there's a touch of melancholy there for me. I can't really explain it, but something happened this morning that completely put me at ease with the whole issue.


So I'm in stride with my head down and I notice a dead mouse in the middle of the road. It wasn't disheveled or beat to hell. In fact, it almost looked as if it had been stuffed and prepped for mounting. I dare say it was the healthiest looking dead mouse I've ever seen. As I said, I can't explain it, but that dead mouse completely revamped my whole take on Christmas 2008. So to that mouse, wherever it be, I want to extend a humble thanks.

Later on, in a totally unrelated event, some 5th graders slayed me with some bad ass amateur magic. Between teaching kids here and teaching archery at a summer camp, 2008 has seen me around little children more than usual. One thing I've learned is that young boys love rocking the card tricks. I find this heartening for two reasons. One, I was nowhere near clever enough to learn these tricks at their age, and two, because it's great to see them get so excited about a skill they worked hard to acquire. That said, I've seen some bumbling 5th grade card tricks, and these were not them. Koreans don't do anything half assed, and I now know that extends to cheap magic. So a word to the wise, if a Korean asks you to check out their magic, fucking do it.

Sometimes I forget.

I unfortunately set up this blog post election, and as an American blog, I think it's important to officially scream from the hilltops just how fucking elated I am that we elected this man.