Five Videos, Zero Context (koreatrip #3)

Shabu Shabu (koreatrip #2)

today we: went to a Korean Folk Village, looked at ways people in Korea lived as the Euroamerica we know today was still in it's nascency. Visited a Korean high school. Went to the Nam June Paik Art Center. I wish I'd have had more time there, possibly alone, but getting to go was big to me. Ate Shabu Shabu, a dish Japan stole from Mongolia, then Korea stole from Japan. I am so full and warm right now.

The humidity here is pervasive. Tommorrow we're heading to Seoul.

International Dateline.(koreatrip #1)

Traveling over the pacific, one skips a day. Arrived in Incheon last night to travel over the longest bridge I've known to float. Korean Air is the poshest sort of economy class and they are, as you can see, very proud of their flight attendant's poise, posture and legs.


The flight was ten hours. I watched five movies. Cedar Rapids, Win Win, The Lincoln Lawyer, Ceremony, and Season of the Witch. Brief rundown: Ed Helms is good at both mocking and venerating good-hearted naive types (and in this way the movie felt strangely old-fashioned), Paul Giamatti Giamattis pretty hard, but not quite oscar-level Giamatti-ing, pretty good, a Max Winkler joint and where have I heard that name before? kinda smug but pulls it together at the end and THE BEST MOVIE EVER.

Hotel is good, jetlag bad, gotta hit up a Folk Village.

s2b

in an hour I leave for:


We will arrive there in twelve hours.

I should make sure I've got my toothbrush packed and at least one light pair of socks.

This time next week, I will be in Korea.

South.

This isn't something I've really kept blogupdated about, because taking a trip is exciting, preparing for a trip is tedious. Preparing for a trip when said preparations require frequent trips out of town*, taking time off an already too-lite workload and asking people for money so you can go on said trip, well, that is tedious, exhausting, frustrating and one must make the choice for it to not be embarrassing**.

That said, as I've observed elsewhere, consistently impressed with the support and generosity of friends and family. So much to do in the next few days.

That said, amuse/distract yourself with this bit of lite-political musing. There's a few points he draws a bit broad, but hey.

*Stanwood, which is no Busan, but still
**I've largely successfully made that choice, and no one's made me feel like I should be be embarrassed. I think "embarrassed" is just a place I find myself easily.

News From Home

the t-shirt factory burned down and now he have nothing to wear on the tops of our bodies. your uncle painted his torso with the melted skin of the factory workers. the rest of town saw that and liked it. now we walk around beating our chests and thinking of clever designs. Some of the knitting circle sold their sewing machines to pay for glue. Skin gets flakey. There'd been a plan, approved by the mayor and everything, to boost civic pride by creating apparel based on the sillouhette of the water tower and catfish billboard by city limits. The idea, your cousin tells me, is to sell them to chiseled men and tall women to wear sexily in other
states, but now all our cloth is smoke. No one can put our town on their bodies, the jobs are all grumpy and angry, fruit is sad and wilty and we've been removed from wikipedia. This is what the mayor told us when he visited for dinner. We had my famous lamb-chops and he asked about you, what you're doing, I said I wasn't sure because your letters are so vague. We all had a laugh about that, except
for your aunt, who is not well and refuses to stay awake in church. When you come, bring anynews clippings about your activities, some smelling salts and sweaters. It will be winter by then,
I'm sure.

Falling down is not magic

Thursday's Hoarse reading--complete with welsh magicians, cake, lots of awesome readers and deepstomach laughter-- and last night's Drink for the Kids (benefitting Vera) were good but sitting completely alone in my house without music on, tacos impending, this is good. Soon I will watch Peep Show and sleep.

But! It should be noted that I'm not just imagining how fun the Hoarse! readings are, or how (coughcoughterriblewordalert) "vibrant" and "diverse" (ughgross) Seattle's "literary community" (AAAAAAAAAAGGGGH!) is, as evidenced by Emily Wittenhagen's awesomely enthused manifesto of the this is why we do this variety.

I like the part about Jurassic Park.