Yo what’s crackin’? This week I watched some movies and worked out at the gym and played Gameboy. None of these activities really warrant being written about at any length, so instead you can look at some awesome artwork I did while riding the subway a couple months ago. Ah what the hell…as a bonus I’ll give you one paragraph reviews of the films I saw this week.
누가 그녀와 잤을까?
I was kind of nervous when my wife rented this one, as Korean comedy movies often tends to be well…not particularly funny, but this one was. The story was kind of similar to the film 몽정기 2 in that the central plot revolved around a group of students that lust after a student teacher. Only in this case the students were male and the teacher female…which I guess would make this film more like 몽정기 1, but I digress. The movie was decently funny, and managed to avoid the random serious turn that most Korean comedy films seem to take in the third act (ala the pregnancy and abortion at the end of 색즉시공). If I were to give it a grade I’d say B+ if only due to the fact that the one dude got unwanted boners much like Spinner in that episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation. And as we all know, boners are funny!
The DaVinci Code
Oh my god…was the book this bad too? Seriously this movie was crap. It was like a Hardy Boys mystery with some sort of dumb ass conspiracy theory. It was terrible, boring, and long. Again, was the book this bad? And if it was, why did so many people read it?
Troy
When I was in third grade my friends and I did a moderization of the story of the Trojan War as a school project. This being the mid-1980s, our quest was to get a video game back from a rival elementary school. This film did not feature a copy of Zelda 2, but was none the less entertaining. Lots of good epic battles. Lots of Brad Pitt as Achilles being an ass and roughing up fools. Trojans a plenty! What wasn’t there to like?! Also, unlike the similarly lengthy DaVinci Code, this film didn’t seem like it was two and a half hours long.
Anyhow that’s it. I’ve got junk to do tomorrow and Sunday, so I might not be back until the New Year. If that’s the case, have a good one, and keep it safe.
So the other day Jinhui and I went on a road trip to visit some island and travel into a wine tunnel. The trip seemed like it was going to be awesome. I mean a wine tunnel?! The pictures on the website made it look like some dungeon meets elegant cafe…plus there was going to be wine. And the island? Islands are always cool. So we were both looking forward to this trip, which made the whole thing all the more disappointing.
Our journey began at 9:30pm when we rendez-voused (wow that was some elite conjugation there) with the rest of our tour group at city hall in Seoul. This trip featured a caravan of 5 tour buses packed with tourists. Maybe it was my cynical American upbringing, but there’s something about a busload of people clapping at lame jokes made by a tour guide that just gets under my skin…either that or it actually was annoying. I tend to think the later since my wife (who was not raised in America) was also annoyed by the clapping and rows of people basically yelling, “Right on!” when they learned they would get one Chocopie each…though I may have had a corupting influence on her during the nearly one year we’ve been married.
So anyhow the bus rolled out on this 5 plus hour ride south. “A five hour bus ride at night? That won’t be too bad, I can just sleep the whole way there…much like I did when we went to Busan,” I thought to myself, and perhaps actually verbalized to my wife prior to boarding the bus, but once I was secure in my seat I learned that I wouldn’t be doing much of anything even closely related to sleep. No cat nap. No shut eye. No 40 winks. Bupkiss! For you see, unlike the bus to Busan which was fairly deluxe, this bus was pretty much a school bus, meaning there wasn’t anything like comfort going on in the seats. That coupled with my legs (which are longer than the average Korean’s and therefore not taken into consideration in places like movie theaters or on buses) made for a pretty awful ride. The two or three times I did manage to doze off were interupted by the tour guide getting on the mic, which by the way had more reverb than the average 노래방 (noraebang aka karaoke) microphone, and making some stupid proclaimation.
After trucking for a good amount of time, it was 3:00 in the morning and the bus made a stop at a hot spring / sauna. Since this cost extra and neither my wife, nor I are particularly keen on being nude with members of the same sex complete strangers we elected to skip it…unfortunately we were in the middle of nowhere, so there wasn’t anything else to do but sit on the bus (which now had the engine turned off and was rapidly getting colder) and try to sleep. With the bus pretty much empty now, getting some sleep was a little easier since we could lay where we felt the urge to. Again, by the time I actually got to sleep, the tour guide was back on the horn telling us it was time to roll out.
It was 5:30 in the morning, and as the bus rolled down nauseatingly windy roads the tour guide kept on yapping. What was she yapping about? Not much, but she just kept talking and then people would clap. “No you fools! Don’t encourage her!” At 6:00 we arrived at our destination: breakfast. Now in the time I’ve been here I’ve pretty much overcome my western, “Ew…that’s weird!” reflex when it comes to food. I mean I’ve eaten whales, grasshoppers, fermented bean paste that pretty much smells like ass, the internal organs of a cow… The one thing I won’t eat is creatures that come from a shell: clams, oysters, etc. They just seem like snot. I’ve tried on several occassions to eat them, but in my humble opinion they’re nasty. So imagine how happy a sleep deprived Wyatt that had just spent seven hours on bus was when he discovered that breakfast was a pot of stew consisting entirely of shit in shells.
I decided that I would just eat rice and the side dishes that were at the table. Apparently in my time here I became a connoisseur of rice, since I found this particular bowl to be overcooked and dry. It was hardly the breakfast of champions. With breakfast out of the way, we and the rest of our tour group (which consisted primarily of girls trying way too hard to be cute and their boyfriends) waited around for 7:30 when we could ride a boat…actually it wasn’t a boat, it was a ferry, and it was small.
I saw a sunrise. It did not suck.
They boat ride on the other hand was pretty terrible. As I mentioned, the boat was kind of small, and the sea was angry that day my friend. For my readers that are not pirates, seamen, or sea captains, let me tell you that sailing in a small boat on choppy water is not very fun. I tried to sleep, but again guys on microphones, and sheer discomfort prevented me from doing so.
After 30 minutes or so we arrived at our destination, an island known as 외도 (外島 / Oedo) which means “Outside Island” (as opposed to all the inside islands). Anyhow there was a botanical garden there for us to examine and take pictures of, which we did. Somewhere around the time that I caressed a statue of Venus my anger and grumpiness faded for the most part. The island was pretty nice, except the guy that yelled at me for sitting in a Santa Claus sleigh because it was apparently too dangerous to get into and out of…that guy was an asshole, but I digress. We scoped an island, I handled the man-junk of a replica of Michelangelo’s David, and we took a lot of pictures. Then it was time to head back to the mainland.
We got back on the boat and drove back to land, and the buses. The drive back was a lot calmer, and almost pleasant. By the time we got to the bus, I was ready for lunch…it was 10:00 in the morning. Onto the bus we went and we drove for a few minutes before we stopped at a cliff overlooking the sea. Apparently some commercial was filmed there. I spit off the cliff, because that’s apparently an awesome thing to do. Then 10 minutes later it was back on the bus.
Somehow I managed to fall asleep for about an hour and a half which really helped heal my eyes up. All morning long, the lack of sleep made my eyes feel like they belonged to a mummy. That’s how dry and itchy they were. But that hour and a half really hooked me up with eyes that were not painful. But I thought to myself, “Self, you were just asleep for an hour and a half. What did you miss?”
The answer was, “nothing.” In the hour and a half that I’d been asleep we’d just been on the road, and we continued driving for another hour and a half. A little after 1:00pm we arrived at some random town which was seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and unloaded for lunch. Lunch was slightly more awesome than breakfast had been, but still was nothing to write home about…so I’m not even going to tell you what we ate.
After lunch we got back on the bus and started driving again. “Why did we stop at that hick town? It seemed really pointless to have lunch there,” I said to my wife. “I know…”
So we drove for an hour or so before arriving at our destination, and the thing I’d been looking forward to all day: the wine tunnel! The wine tunnel had been the one thing that was keeping me going. I knew that if I could endure the shitty food, and uncomfortable seats just a little bit, there would be a trip into a wine tunnel. That promise alone helped me make it through…and now I was there.
If I learned one thing on this trip it was never expect anything to be good, because you’ll only get disappointed.
The pictures I had seen of the wine tunnel on the internet made it look awesome. It kind of looked like a dungeon meets romantic cafe meets wine being in there. The reality was far less awesome. There were no nice romatic tables with a candle on it. Hell no, there were rows and rows of white plastic lawn chairs. And somehow, when the romantic cafe part of the wine tunnel vanishes, the tunnel part starts to suck quickly. The floor was dirt, the walls were dirty, and the ceiling was covered some sort of green plastic…mesh, that had…water on it, and…I don’t know what it was for, but it was there, and not nice.
There was a concert there. A Christmas concert. I’ve been been to a lot concerts before. I’ve been to shows in stadiums, shows on the street, shows in basements, and everywhere in between. A tunnel is not a very good place for a concert. The reason is this: the shape of a tunnel makes it so that only the people closest to the stage (about 4 rows) could see anything. Everyone else could kind of hear it (since there was no P.A. system really this too was difficult), but all I could see was the back of some random dude’s head.
The trip at this point had a grade of about D or F, but then someone gave me wine. I knew we would be getting wine, but when I saw the lawn chairs, I half expected to get a paper cup of wine and maybe like 2 crackers. So imagine my surprise when the wine was given to me in an actual wine glass! Also we didn’t get 2 crackers, but plates of crackers and cheese and…DRIED PERSIMMON!!! Now Americans, to my knowledge, don’t really eat a lot of persimmons, but let me tell you: Countrymen! You are missing out! Persimmons are awesome! Go forth and eat them!!
So speaking of persimmons, not only did we get dried persimmons to snack on, but the wine itself was forged…built…brewed…made from persimmons! It tasted pretty good. My wife says that it was deep. It was different from the regular grape kind of wine in both taste and smell, but it was pretty alright…and just pretty. The color was nice.
So Jinhui and I decided to get our money’s worth and we got as many glasses of wine and plates of crackers as we could. Also as other people left, we moved forward to get a look at the stage. The concert was pretty weird. First there was a group that did some classical music, and had an opera singer. I don’t like opera ladies, their voices are too loud and high and make my head (which is made of glass) feel like it’s going to explode. Opera men are not that awesome either, because they try too hard to have a low voice. After the opera singers there was a poetry reading.
Jinhui and I both did not like poetry reading. I thought it was boring. She thought it was depressing. We both thought it was a pain in the ass. Following the poetry slam, a jazz band took the stage! The jazz band played a selection of Christmas tunes: Silver Bells, Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Blue Christmas…Desperado. You know, all the classics!
After the jazz group, the show was over. Jinhui and I bought some persimmon wine, and then it was back on the bus. The tour was over and it was time to go home. The trip home was just okay. We played Tetris…well, Jinhui played Tetris, and I watched some crappy movie about a retarded guy that likes to run. Some four hours later we were back at home. We heard some more pointless clapping and then the tour was over and I was glad.
We learned two important lessons on this tour, the first as I already mentioned was not to get ones hopes up about anything. The second, and perhaps more practical was not to go on group tours anymore. The past two group tours I’ve been on have wasted so much time jackassing around in bus and we ended up not seeing as much as we could have. Anyhow that’s about it. If you want to look at pictures check out my Flickr account.
Well, this evening for Christmas I’m heading off on a cruise and going on a trip into a wine tunnel (韓: 와인터널). No, I’m not sure what a wine tunnel actually is but to quote my wife, “I like wine, and tunnels are alright, so it should be okay.” So you probably will not hear from me until after the Christmas holiday. So I’m going to take this moment to just offer up seasonal greetings and wish all of you out there the best. I hope you all get what you want for Christmas…me? I’m going into a wine tunnel!
Anyhow this wine tunnel adventure appeared out of nowhere on really short notice, so I’m aborting the translation project I was working on for this Christmas season. Basically all you need to know about that is Christmas seals were brought to Korea by a Canadian chap named Sherwood Hall in 1932, and in 1940 the Japanese deported him from the country for being a spy. Anyhow here are the Korean Christmas seals from 1932 up through 1939…Merry Christmas!
Oh, and if you are a member of my family, don’t attempt calling me, since I won’t be home. I’ll give you cats a jingle upon my return.
I saw the film 中天 (which for some reason got saddled with the English title “The Restless”) last night, and my immediate take on the film was that it was a lot like the hot girl in your high school. You know the girl. She knew she looked hot and this being high school she was well liked no matter what she said or did simply due to the fact that she was hot.
中天 was kind of like that hot girl. It was probably one of the most beautiful films I have seen in awhile in terms of scenery and other words that film school geeks like to toss around, but the film didn’t really have a lot to say…and sadly this isn’t high school anymore, so girls or movies can’t get by on looks alone. That being said the movie wasn’t a total dog.
The movie’s plot goes a little something like this…
A warrior named 이곽 (Lee Gwok) gets run out of town in a rain storm and takes shelter inside some shack in the woods with all manner of religious iconography. When he awakes he finds that he is no longer in said shack, but in 中天 (lit. “Middle Heaven”). He talks to some people that are all shocked to learn that he is not actually dead. Suddenly some enemies attack and Mr. Gwok saves a celestial being that used to be his wife or lover or girlfriend. This lady (named 소화 [Sohwa]) and Mr. Gwok hit the road and during the rest of the film run around from fantastic landscape to fantastic landscape and battle enemy forces…who as chance would have it were at one times Lee Gwok’s friends / co-workers. That’s pretty much the entire plot…
While the story might not have been that intense, there were some positive aspects to the film. Aside from the afore mentioned lush landscapes there were some pretty decent martial arts battles. Remember that movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Remember how pissed off you were that there was so little fighting? Yeah, the creators of this film must have heard your complaints since there were crazy fight scenes all over the place. I mean the movie starts off with the hero of the film dispatching some monsters that are menacing a girl tied to a stake. And the film continues with the battles up to the end of the film which kind of looked a lot like someone playing a Dynasty Warriors game (in that it was one man against an army). Also as a student of Korean history it was interesting for me to learn that at the end of the Shilla dynasty there were orcs that roamed the countryside.
Transitioning to something else smoothly…
Several of the reviews I have read of this film compare it to Lord of the Rings, which I personally didn’t get. Granted I may have missed some bits of dialogue due to my less than perfect understanding of the Korean language, and the fact that I was drinking beers, but here are all the similarities to the movie Lord of the Rings (as opposed to the book).
1. Massive use of CGI
2. Orc like monsters
3. Swords, Arrows, Spears
4. Enemy with magic and long white hair clad in robes
5. A large red eye over the final boss’ lair.
And that’s pretty much it…oh there were fights also. So since that seems to be enough to say it’s a lot like Lord of the Rings, I’m going to make my own proclaimation that it was more like Spiderman (again the movie as opposed to the book…er comic book) than it was like Lord of the Rings.
1. Again…massive use of CGI
2. Enemy that had metal tentacles coming out of his back.
3. Swinging from buildings
4. A man with super powers.
5. The man believing that with great power comes great responsibilty
6. Dude doing all sorts of crazy junk to get with the lady he loves.
So that’s one more. This movie is exactly like Spiderman! Actually it’s not like either, it’s like a wuxia film only with actors speaking Korean as opposed to speaking Mandarin or Cantonese. Is it worth checking out? If you like martial arts violence, guys that can fly, or pretty building and mountains than I’d say yes. If you dislike those three things I’d say no.
Some weeks back I mentioned a television taping I attended. On Sunday evening while my wife and I were assembling a puzzle and checking out MTV, the afore mentioned concert was broadcast and while a lot of junk that went down was edited out, my exchange with the lead singer of the group Veil was not, so I was on television.
The very next day was a Monday. As anyone that has lived in Korean can attest, the main form of advertising is not television commercials or print ads in the newspaper, but randomly taping fliers to people’s doors. So one such flier was taped to my door. This particular flier was for the hagwon that my wife and I at one time worked for. I stopped working there sometime in September…my wife somewhat later in November. Imagine my surprise when there we both were in various photos attached to this advertisement. While some of the photos I recall being taken there were several that I am under the impression were Photoshopped and one my wife and I are convinced was taken off her Cyworld page. Neither of us got any kind of compensation for this, but since this is Korean such unauthorized use doesn’t seem to be against the law here. So I guess it’s just one more thing I can add to my resume of awesomeness.
“Hi, I’m Wyatt…teacher / actor / model / awesome dude!”
On the third day of our trip to Jeju, I once again awoke at the asscrack of dawn. We showered, had a cup of coffee and watched some television while we waited for the tour bus to come and pick us up at our hotel. The television was slightly disappointing. Unlike America where a trip across state lines means exposure to some random regional television (commercials and local news stations in particular), a trip to different regions in Korea doesn’t really effect what one sees on television. TV is Jeju was exactly the same as TV in Busan which was exactly the same as TV in Seoul. It’s makes for bland domestic travel, but I seriously digress.
Around 8:30 in the morning, the bus picked us up and we headed off to adventure. The first stop was 용두암 (龍頭岩), which if the 漢字 were to be believed was a large rock shaped like a dragon’s head. As the bus roared along, Jinhui and I partook in some Jeju Milk, which in terms of taste was on par with Seoul Milk (and much better than Busan Milk).
While television might not be that different from place to place, brands of milk (to some extent), and the brands of soju avalible vary a great deal. The 진로 brand seems to be a brand avaliable from coast to coast, but each province seems to have it’s own local brand. In Seoul (and Gyeonggi province) we have 山소주. Busan has C1. In Jeonju I saw Hite brand soju, and in Jeju I saw 한라소주 (and some lower alcohol version which was in a clear bottle). Again I really went off on a tangent here. Back to the awesomeness at hand.
The bus picked up some other travelers and after a short ride we were at 용두암. I quickly learned that either people of yore had much better imaginations than I do, or the effects of weathering had taken their toll on the rock, because I could not for the life of me see a dragon’s head. Anyhow we saw a rock and then we were wisked off to a gift shop for an hour of shopping. At about this time I started to loathe the tour group. I didn’t know why we needed an hour of shopping in one store that had all the same stuff we’d seen everywhere else only like 20% more expensive.
So I was loathing the tour group, but my loathing ceased when we were taken to Elephant Land to see an elephant show. In my youth I had bore witness to an elephant show at the Catskill Game Farm (RIP homie) that featured twirling elephants. As these elephants twirled, they shat, and as they shat all the people in the first few rows screamed in terror. This event was so etched into the minds of my family and myself that it is still brought up in conversation to this day. That’s how awesome it was (we were not in the front row so it truly was awesome)! Anyhow this show was awesome too, though it did not feature a single shitting elephant. What it did feature were a bunch of elephants doing decidedly non-elephant like junk. They painted. They went bowling. They stood upon the asses of the audience members. They came into the audience to get bananas and cash…kind of like tusked strippers at a gentlemen’s club. And then there was the basketball game!
The b-ball game featured elephants slam dunkin’ the rock, drainin’ 3s, and (insert another early 90s basketball related slogan that probably appeared in the game NBA Jams here). So the elephants were basically being Jimmy Jump when suddenly one of the elephants went down to the ground. The music stopped and the announcer started talking to the boss of Elephant Land.
“What the shit’s going on here?” I thought to myself, “Is this for real?”
After all that, we got our pictures taken with elephants, but that was not the end of our dealings with dirty animals…not by a long shot!
I read of a Korean saying that translated to something like, “If you have a son send him to Seoul. If you have a horse, send it to Jeju.” I don’t really know what that means, but a lot of dudes must have bought into the line since there were tons of horses in Jeju…and following the elephant show we were going to a dude ranch to ride some!
After a brief bus ride we were at the ranch, but we couldn’t just jump on some horses and start playing cowboys or Saratoga Race Course. No, first we had to but on some rediculous gear. The gear in question consisted of a hat that was more a Crocodile Dundee hat than a cowboy hat, a red vest, and some boots that looked a lot like the boots I had to wear during my wedding ceremony. Once geared up, it was time to ride.
I have some horseback riding experience from my teenage years, and the thing that stuck with me all this time was that horseback riding hurts one’s nuts. This second trip confirmed this preconcieved notion. That being said, aside from the painful nuts, horseback riding was really fun…oh except for when the horse Jinhui was riding decided that it would be totally awesome to have gas and then take a shit while my horse was right behind it. But other than that it was fun.
And then we had some lunch. Lunch was all you could eat 흑돼지 or black pig (aka “shit pig”) and 막걸리 (makkoli…a type of liquor). AWESOME!!! Free booze is always a plus. As for the 흑돼지 it didn’t taste all that different from regular pork. Though it did look like it could use a shave. Seriously that meat had a five o’clock shadow!
Following lunch we went to a cave. I had not been inside a cave or cavern or any manner of underground rock formation since my fourth grade class went on a field trip to Howe Caverns. This cave was about as intense as that (read as not very intense, but fairly awesome). Unlike Howe Caverns, this cave did not have any stalactites or stalagmites. Nor were there any bats. There was a Buddha statue. It was pretty okay. Also there was a park located around the cave that had cacti and palm trees. We took some pictures.
Then we went to a cliff where there was a lighthouse, a set from the television drama All In, the sea, and some seemingly ownerless horses. After some photos here and a quick stop at a seaside seafood restaurant it was back to the airport and farewell to Jeju.
The trip home was uneventful save for the fact that at security I got stopped and asked if I had a knife in my bag. I told them I didn’t and was asked to open a pocket in my bag where I was surprised to find that I did indeed have a knife in my bag. The knife, which had apparently been left in the bag the last time he went mountain climbing, had been in my bag the entire trip unknown to anyone (apparently including the security personel at Kimpo Airport). Anyhow the knife wasn’t a big issue. They took it away from me and I apologized and we continued on. The corkscrew in my wife’s bag was apparently less of a security threat than a knife with a three inch blade and was allowed through the baggage check without incident.
Otherwise the trip home was uneventful. We waited around for an hour or so before we got on the plane and went home. Oh wait! I forgot about the guy that was staggering drunk before boarding the plane. When he got on, I heard one of the stewardesses phone someone to alert then that “a seriously drunk man just got on,” and to “be advised.” Aside from reeking of booze as I walked past him the drunk guy caused no problems that I could see.
So an hour after take off we were back in Seoul, and then it was another hour before we were back home and in bed. In conclusion if you want to see pictures of day three of my trip to Jeju (complete with some captions), the check this link out. If you do not wish to see pictures than have a nice day, we’ll see you next time!
On the first full day in Jeju, I awoke at the crack of dawn…before even the alarm clock set for way too early in the morning was supposed to go off. I don’t know about all of you in TV land, but this is a normal thing for me both when traveling and on the eve of my travels. Once awake I got a shower going on and then prepared an outstanding breakfast of leftover Italian food and cup ramen…oh and coffee too, but actually Jinhui made the coffee, not me, and I guess technically I didn’t make the pizza either since I just heated it up, but I did so without an oven or microwave oven for that matter so that’s gotta count for something.
Moving on, starting on this day Jinhui and I were going to be traveling as part of a tour group. So at early o’clock in the morning the tour bus came to our hotel and picked us up. From this point on the entire trip became a lot like the Magical Mystery Tour, only I was the walrus and there were a lot more newlyweds. Once all these couples had been picked up we headed off on our adventure.
The first stop of the day was 신비의도로 (The Road of Mystery) or as my wife and countless other people on the tour referred to it, 도깨비도로 (Goblin Road). Technically we didn’t really even stop. The gimmick of this site is that it’s a hill that things roll up as opposed to down. So the bus driver turned off the engine, but the bus in neutral and we rolled up a hill. It was kind of weird, but not as awesome as if there had been actual goblins about. At the end of the Road of Mystery, the bus door opened and some middle aged lady jumped on and grabbed the microphone in the front.
At first this kind of freaked me out since I had no idea who she was, and up until this point the bus driver had been serving as the tour guide, but apparently this lady was the real guide and the other dude was just a driver who apparently was super knowledgeable about roads and goblins so he got to be the tour guide for that segment. With the real tour guide now on board we headed to some venue to see some kind of circus show at 10:00 in the morning. “A circus at 10? What the deuce?”
So anyhow we saw the most randomest circus ever. There were no animals, but a lot of acrobats and people swinging on stuff that was hanging from the ceiling. People swung on long red ribbons, and people swung on metal deals, and they swung on other people…it was out of control. There was also a lady that did hula hoop with many hula hoops! She had at least 8 hula hoops going at one time with various different parts of her body! It was a little bit amazing since I can barely do one hula hoop with my waist and here was this lady doing many hula hoops with various different parts of her body. The hula hoop lady and people swinging around and also the Chinese girls that should have been in school but instead were in Jeju doing tricks with paper lanterns were all pretty good, but the most excellent of excellent adventures were the motorcycle guys.
“Motorcycle guys?”
Yes, motorcycle guys. This event had not been introduced on the tour bus as a circus, but rather as a motorcycle show show show (the tour guide had repeated the word “show” three times when telling us about it), so when we arrived I half expected some guys on dirt bikes popping wheelies and doing things one might find in the game Excite Bike. Howdy was I wrong!
No wheelies were popped, but seven men on motorcycles got into a giant metal sphere and raced around like madmen…or maybe Mad Max. Anyhow the awesomeness is just too awesome for me to attempt to describe with either English or Korean or any language of the mortals. I guess it’s a lot like the concept of Tao in that there’s no way for normal people to talk about it. Or something…awesome! So instead of writing it was awesome a bunch of times, check it out yourself!
Now I’m well aware that there are fewer than seven mens inside the ball in the video, but the stunts they did when they were seven strong were not as amazing (though the fact that there were seven men and seven motorcycles in the ball was amazing on it’s own) as the moves they did when there were less than seven mens…so that’s the video I elected to post.
Anywho, after the motorcycle show we got on the bus again and drove again until we arrived at a park filled with minautre models of famous monuments. So in an hour I was able to take pictures infront of The Great Wall of China, The Effiel Tower, and the pyramids. It was kind of funny, but my wife said that there was a similar park in Seoul that had a better set up so it was easier to take more realistic looking photos. This park was good if you wanted to take pictures that made you look like some sort of Godzilla enemy, which is pretty much what I am! Also there were statues of cosmonauts and football players and the seven dwarves, so that was there too. At this park we were also given some manner of free lunch which was buffet style Korean food, meaning there was rice and kimchi and soup made of seaweed and some other stuff too.
Following lunch we boarded the bus and headed off to a tangerine farm. Jeju-do is pretty famous for citrus fruit, particularly tangerines, so apparently a trip to a tangerine farm is a must for every tour group to Jeju-do. I was a little less than enthralled since I don’t really care all that much about where fruit comes from and care about it even less when the tour becomes a sales pitch for some sort of oriental medicine. But this is life in a guided tour…so I held my tounge, ate free tangerines, and took some pictures in an orchard.
After the boring orchard we got back on a bus and drove to a park where we saw a waterfall. It was pretty nice, but I was more impressed with the presence of phonebooths shaped like 돌하르방. Actually I take that back the waterfall was more awesome than the phonebooths, but the phonebooths were pretty radical.
With our time at the waterfall behind us we got back on the bus and literally drove 300 meters before we were made to disembark and get on a boat. This boat was pretty similar to the boat that goes up and down the Han River in Seoul, only instead of going up and down a river it went out to sea. And instead of getting to see a lot of bridges and building we got to see a lot of small islands that were made out of volcanoes. The cruise was pretty decent, and the dude (he wasn’t a sea captain, but he had a sea captain uniform on) that told us what we were looking at was a hoot (and yes, I just used to phrase “a hoot” to describe a humorous person inspite of the fact that I was not born in the 1930s). So that happened.
Then we drove to some hotel where they filmed a scene in the movie 쉬리. There was also a beach there and some other junk like palm trees and an ice skating rink. Suddenly it was super dark so we couldn’t take good pictures anymore. At this point the tour was over for the day. We were planning on going to place called Love Land without the tour group, but it suddenly started raining like a mofo, so we went back to the hotel and ordered Chinese food and drank wine.
Here ends the adventures that transpired on the second day. If you want to see pictures, then click this link that is located here.
Korea has MTV. I’m not talking about M-net or KMTV…I’m talking straight up MTV, and the other day I went to their studios to see a concert. A concert that was filmed to be put on television. Also it was free and they gave me beer, but I’m really getting ahead of myself here now aren’t I? Let’s be backtracking…pistol packing and get it going on!
Last weekend I took Jinhui to her first rock concert which was kind of like My First Sony only not as red or as plastic. Inspite of the lack of red plastic, Jinhui really enjoyed the rock show and wanted to go rock out again. The group she most wanted to see? Jaurim! And as chance would have it, a meer five days later Jaurim was putting on a show at MTV Studio, and it was free, and since it was sponsored by Budweiser there was free beer as well. “Cool! Let’s rock it like a robot!” was pretty much my response.
And that’s just what we did! We got there early since it was free and there were a limited number of tickets. So we grabbed our tickets and then had dinner at Kimbab Nara (김밥나라) or Kimbab Cheonguk (김밥천국) and did word search puzzles. Finally it was time to go and rock out and get recorded doing so.
This was the first time I’d ever been to something being recorded for television save for that time that my journalism class in high school went to the local NBC station to see the news at noon get recorded, but that was very different. Before any rocking commenced a producer came out on the stage and gave us some rules. Photos were okay, but flashes were not since sometimes flashes cause people to make zombie faces which makes for poor television. We had to watch out for our personal belongs. And I think that was about it, but I wasn’t really paying attention since I just wanted to rock! Then it was time!
Heritage
This was a band that prior to this event I’d never heard of. When they first hit the stage I noticed that there was a lack of a singer. “Ah…this must be due to the fact that this is being taped for television. The singer’s probably going to come out when they start filming,” I thought to myself. And I was right…kind of. The singer did come out when the filming began, only they weren’t one singer there were seven of them. That’s right ladies and gentlemen a group with seven singers that were not a boy or girl group. This group instead hijacked soul, funk, gospel, and from time to time hip-hop in an effort to get the party started. I had a couple problems with them though. First of all the one dude sounded like he was trying to be James Brown except when he sounded like Heavy D from Heavy D and the Boys. Everyone else sang as though there were a member of MC Hammer’s posse on the song, “Don’t Pass Me By.” Heritage, you might have had a live band and a girl with a head shaped like a lion, but you can’t fool me into thinking shoddy covers of “What’s Goin’ On” make you a real soul group!
진희曰: They were too confusing. There were so many singers I didn’t know where to look. Also I couldn’t tell who was singing what so I didn’t know who was a good singer and who was bad.
Side-B
I thought that I’d never heard of this group either, but apparently in the spring of 2005 I included them in a rant about how bad braids look on white people and Asian people. At this point I would like to ammend said 2005 article by stating that Side-B may in fact have horrible hair but they sure know how to rock the party. Also I want to add that it’s really difficult to try and take pictures of rappers while they are performing. At least with a rock band they are attached to instruments that impede their ability to move quickly. These guys were like superballs…flying and jumping all over the place. Jesus God Damn it was difficult to take pictures! But that’s alright, I was rocking out anyway!
진희曰: They were out of control.
Veil
Veil was another group that I truly had never heard of, but apparently everyone else in attendance had since they were all weilding Veil hand towels (as a quick sidebar this seems to be a common item for Korean bands to sell. I have personally seen No Brain towels, Crying Nut towels, and now Veil towels, but never in my 23 years of dwelling in the US did I see any band selling towels. There are no Les Savy Fav or Pearl Jam towels). Anyhow I really rocked out on a tangent there. Veil were a pretty decent rock and roll combo. Basically there were the group Transfixion (aka pretty boy rockers) only they had a rapper also. It was the oddest form of rap-rock or rock-rap I’d ever heard in my life, but somehow it was a little bit awesome. Also during the show the singer that wasn’t a rapper attempted to explain what Veil stood for. It was apparently “Various Elements In Life,” or something akin to that which he said in English which sounded like he had marbles in his mouth. He than spotted me in the crowd and asked me if I could understand. I said I could…though in reality I couldn’t until the rapper (who I’m pretty sure either lived or studied) in an English speaking country explained it again. Luckily the cameramen all recorded this exchange increasing my chances of appearing on television about 48.2%. Radical!!!
We later discovered that the singers in Veil had a secret past which kind of explained their level of fame. The singing guy was apparently a former teen idol dance singing in the early 1990s (진희曰: 1992) and the rapper was a one time member of Koyote who apparently got into some drug related trouble and was sacked from the group. Anyhow that’s why they were famous, but we didn’t know it at the time.
진희曰: They are fun to watch. It was interesting: rap and rock…rap-rock! I’ve never seen that. I wish I got a stick or towel or something that they threw after the show. I almost got a sticker but someone took it. I was scared. (Wyatt 曰: There was some middle aged 아저씨 that was way to into Veil and would throw himself into the crowd of female fans to snag stickers. This was the guy that got the sticker 진희 attempted to grab.)
Jaurim
Apparently the members of Jaurim have rocking out gear, since they were all sporting the same gear that they had worn to the concert some 5 days before. Also I am now under the impression that Jaurim’s singer, Kim Yuna (김윤아) must be told that she is pretty before they can start rocking…at least that’s what the mens in the audience would leave me to believe. As soon as she come out it was all, “오~아! 예쁘다!” (Wo~ah! She’s beautiful!) In all honesty she’s good looking, but she doesn’t need to be told that. Pretty girls already know they’re pretty and telling them so only gives them a swelled head, like Peter Brady in that episode of the Brady Bunch where he saves some kid from getting crushed in a toy store and then gets a trampoline and assorted other junk…including a swelled head! What was I talking about? Oh yes, rock and roll!
So Jaurim played some rock and roll jams. Most of the tunes they played were off their latest album, which makes sense since this was a televised event and they probably wanted to use it to oh I dunno…promote the fact that they have a new album. Anyhow new songs sounded really good. That Kim Yuna sure knows how to sing and jump while wearing high heels! Also do you remember “Freebird?” Did you ever see Lyyard Skynyrd on VH1 behind the music? Remember the part where they talk about “Freebird” having a triple guitar attack? Yeah?! Well Jaurim at one point had a triple keyboard attack which was almost as bad ass.
진희曰: She had the same clothes and you (Wyatt) wanted to yell that, but I stopped you. That’s not a good move.
With Jaurim finished, so was the show. We exited the building and again were handed free Budweiser (thanks dudes!) and then headed home. Anyhow it was taped and will probably air sometime soon on MTV in Korea. If you happen upon the True Music Live show on MTV featuring any of the bands mentioned above, keep your eyes peeled. I’m the white guy in a yellow sweatshirt. And in the meantime if you want to look at pictures of rap rock and roll, check out these pictures here at this site. (link)
Previously on X-men…
Previously on this webpage I brought to your attention the Hyundai Comboy and it’s multitude of wonderful commercials. The advent of 16 bit graphics and more mighty video gaming systems was not a kiss of death for Hyundai’s foray into the world of video games. Hells no son! I give you SUPER COMBOY!!! Or at least I give you a pair of commercials that I’m sure caused some kids in this country to annoy the hell out of their parents. “엄마…슈퍼컴보이 사줘!!! 흑흑흑…” (Mom…buy me Super Comboy!!! Sob. Sob. Sob.)
This first spot features a couple of kids marveling over the sheer awesomeness of their new Super Comboy all while rocking out with some regional dialect.
The amount of royalties that Hyundai must have had to pay to make this commercial! I mean it features (in no particular order) characters from Dragon Ball, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tiny Toons, Street Fighter, and Mario. To clear the usage of all those characters with their respective creators must have cost a fortune…oh hello Disney Daycare what are you doing here? Anyhow if you like cartoon characters, songs, and copyright infringement check out this ad!
I am totally convinced that there is no such thing as a decent third installment to a series of horror films. On Friday evening Jinhui and I trekked over to our local movie theater to check out the third film of the Saw series. The first two films had been creepy and kind of made me want to take a shower after seeing them. This third one was just disgusting.
Watching this movie was more like watching Faces of Death or one of those medical documentaries on the Discovery Channel. Perhas this is due to the fact that there was an extended scene in which a doctor cuts open a dude’s skull to relieve the pressure on his brain. This was the most disturbing part of the film, but was ultimately not scary at all…simply stomach turning.
The other traps in the film ranged from sadistic and overly cruel (a pointlessly nude woman in a freezer being sprayed with water) to rediculous (a man chained in a vat that was being filled with dead pigs that were first liquified). None of these traps were particularly frightening…though they did make me question the minds of the people who created them for the film.
But my (sarcasm)favorite(/sarcasm) part of this film was the use of flashbacks! I’d say a good 30 - 40% of the film consisted solely of flashbacks. There were flashbacks to Saw. There were flashbacks to Saw 2. But my favorite of all the flashbacks were the ones that showed us something that happened in Saw 3 a meer ten minutes before…just in case we forgot.
This film was pretty much a complete waste of time. There was nothing of a storyline, being a horror film the acting was…well none of the actors are going to walk away with an Oscar for this film, and perhaps the biggest problem was it wasn’t even scary. Disgusting? Yes, but nothing in it was scary. There was no Friday the 13th / Volvox creepy sound effects. There were no spring loaded cats. Just pointless gore. Do yourself a favor and skip this crap.
I discovered completely by accident this truly bizarre Hyundai product. What I am about to present to you is the Hyundai Comboy (현대컴보이), which looks suprisingly similar to the Nintendo Entertainment System. Now the very existance of this item raises some questions for me. First off this thing is clearly labeled as a Hyundai product, yet all the games are clearly Nintendo games. So was this some sort of actual business arrangement or was Hyundai totally ripping off Nintendo’s shit? If you have any information regarding the Hyundai Comboy please let me know as these kind of things keep me awake at night.
This commercial features an oddly shaped cartoon Mario showing a family that really likes the color white how much fun they can have with a Comboy. Bonus points for the tune.
In this commerical a young boy’s depression is cured by a cartoon Mario and the arrival of a Hyundai Comboy. The commercial also alerts us to the existance of a Mini-Comboy (aka Gameboy).
A man is a costume ghoul of some sorts appears and tries to ruin a boy and girl’s Comboy based fun by chasing them through games like Super Mario Bros. 2 and The Legend of Zelda. Luckily there’s a cartoon Mario running about!
If you only watch one of these commercials, this is the one to see as it is clearly the most off the wall. Costume Koreans dance about and sing the virtues of a video game system.
On Wednesday November 29, 2006in the year of our lord Jinhui and I went to the zoo and saw all kinds of totally awesome animals. Additionally we saw some not so awesome animals too, but I didn’t take any pictures of them…only the awesome ones. These are the pictures of the awesome animals.
Of all the totally radical animals that we saw on this day (and did we see some radical animals believe you me) the two animals which were the most of them awesome were two animals that I had never heard of prior to this trip to the zoo. These animals were called: binturong and caracal respectively. Basically the existance of these two animals proved that there is something to the entire 음 and 양 (yin and yang for the rest of the world) concept. The binturong (this link was selected simply because the site is called Lioncrusher…which pretty much is totally awesome) was the most chillax animal that I have ever seen in my life. Basically the thing looks rediculous and was chilling out on some jungle gym deal, when I pointed at it and laughed and pretty much yelled, “You look redankulous binturong!” What did the binturong do? Get all pissed off and try to throw down on me? Hell no! The binturong jumped off his jungle gym and came up to the bars and was all like, “Check me out…I’m the fuckin’ binturong!” That was cool as him. His face was rediculous and he was a chill dude. I would have liked to have a brew with him, but I didn’t. Anyhow binturong is cool and relaxed and apparently smells like popcorn…but I don’t really know about that since I didn’t sniff him. Anyhow…
If the binturong was the chillest animal ever, the caracal was the ragin’-est. This dude would get totally pissed off about nothing. I didn’t laugh at his face or anything and he started screaming at me and junk. You don’t believe me? Check out this out of control footage!
He was all like “Heeeeest! Heeeeeest!” Asshole! Nah, I take that back. He was cool too, but in a totally different way. I’d like to drink some brews with binturong, but if I was in a street fight with weapons I would totally want caracal to have my back.
Anyhow this writing is getting less than awesome because I still have a stupid cast on my right hand. So I’m calling it quits now. Look at the pictures if you want to look at other awesome animals like elephants and tigers and white tigers and ostriches and stuff like that.
