The Host: It's a Korean movie, you know

warning: this may well be the most half-assed review I've ever put written, somehow even managing to top my splendid "effort" for The Gauntlet seven years ago when I reviewed a movie that I didn't bother to see. I'd post the link to it but I figure what's to follow will have to suffice as far as shameful criticism is concerned.

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When I first arrived in Korea thirteen months ago everyone was talking about a film about two men caught in the throes of forbidden love. No, not Brokeback Mountain, a picture that seemingly opted for the shock value of cowboy-on-farmhand action while leaving aside gauche elements such as feelings - and I'm guessing that there was supposed to be more than a "friends with benefits" thing going on there. No, the film I am referring to is The King and the Clown, itself every bit as compromised, though this time in favour of love at the expense of the Chosun Court Jester being used as Plaything by Royal Decree. At the time it was easy to get caught up how brave this film was (to a great many Koreans Fan Death exists but homosexuality doesn't) but hopefully this didn't obscure its greatness.

The King and the Clown seemingly came up in conversation at every possible opportunity and made me fondly recall a time when the release of a movie was an event in Canada too. But towards the end of July it suddenly became old news as Korea's summer blockbuster came out. The Host had not only stolen all of Clown's thunder, it had usurped it at the box office as well.

I'm certainly no expert on the subject having (a) only seen four Korean films so far (can't seem to track down Peppermint Candy) and (b) admittedly harbouring a bias against movies in general (I just can't get excited about them the way the books and music excite me) but there's something distinctly empty about The Host - and this is ignoring the deflatting, insulting ending. Is it too colonial of me to expect something distinctly Korean from a Korean picture?

There's something - mind you, I can't quite figure out what - that links the three other Korean movies I've seen, hugely different though they all are from one another: My Sassy Girl, a romantic comedy unlike any other I've ever seen, Oldboy, a superb gangster vengence romp and The King and the Clown, the only one not slated to be canibalised with an American remake (apparently there was a time when Americans were able to come up with their own ideas for watchable movies and TV shows but not in my lifetime). The director has even admitted that there's very little about it that is Korean.

As for the movie itself, it's not bad. The shoestring budget doubtless contributes to the Spartan effects but that probably also makes the Han River monster look more realistic. The acting is at best rudimentary (though Go Ah-sung is pretty good as the little girl), the nadir being Song Kang-ho in the lead, although if he was going for the David Schwimmer-guppy fish look then his performance can be deemed as nothing but a complete success. Most worrisome is that I found myself completely unconcerned for these people despite the nightmarish conditions they were facing. The same kind of indifference with which I've written this review.

Coming Soon: Dispatches of an Intrepid Globetrotter...uh, some stories from my upcoming travels

Just five more weeks to go and this whole Korea experience - eating strange foods, titanic drinking sessions, teaching and re-teaching challenging concepts such as the difference between "he" and "she" and the pronounciation of words with "qu-", trying to block out the din of the neighbours beating the shit out of one another - will draw to a close - or be put on hold - so I may take a break from all this ennui.

The current plan is for Kristina and me to fly from Incheon to Bali on May 1st, spend about three weeks in Indonesia and then head up to Singapore for a six week overland journey up to Vietnam. We head back to Korea on July 5th and then ought to be back in Calgary a couple days later in order to celebrate Bastille Day and my niece's first birthday in my hometown where I belong.

Very little else has been planned but I'm looking at filling up this blog with about as many travel pieces as possible. Any suggestions as to what we should see or what I should write about would be appreciated. Let the planning commence!

What a croc!

Having been otherwise preoccupied as of late, I've been trying to get reacquainted with some of my old favourites on the web this week (insert joke here). Normally a visit to Kai's blog is a useful way to remind myself of just how technologically imbecilic I've been ever since Turtle became passe but his recent thoughts on the corrupt Croc footwear industry have given me pause for thought (I really must open a book one of these days).

Not to downplay an obvious price-fixing scheme concocted by the shoestores of Cornwall (you've gotta believe it has spread to Devon and Monmouthshire by now) but old Kai's discovery has uncovered a far more serious social problem: there are still people buying bloody Crocs!

I know I shouldn't judge given that I was still wearing acid-wash nut huggers as recently as 1994 (yeah, so what if Wheels was my favourite on Degrassi?) but Crocs have to be one of the most absurd fashion trends since leotards and Chip 'n' Pepper shirts. When Kristina returned to Korea from Calgary last summer, I couldn't believe she was sporting a navy-blue pair of these eyesores and was aghast to learn that they were the hot item of 2006 throughout North America. And, indeed, so too were the Koreans we'd encouter: they were doubtless wondering why this lovely Weyguk was walking around in her bathroom slippers.

On the other hand, a country with men who wear pink might not be in any place to judge.

Is there Something/Anything else I can do?

The results are in and now I can go back to despairing about my literary future instead of dreaming wistfully about it. But the summer of 2008 isn't all that far off and, assuming the upcoming Van Dyke Parks and Nas books don't drive the whole enterprise into the ground, there's no time like the present to keep the fantasies alive...

...not to mention some early planning selecting the perfect title they simply won't reject this time round. That's right, I won't be pitching Chips from the Chocolate Fireball again (though I'm thinking about doing something with it): no, I'm not that bullheaded and stubborn. I've already begun handicapping the (very) early favourites:

- Eli and the Thirteenth Confession by Laura Nyro
- Eskimo by The Residents (or, possibly, Third Reich and Roll)
- Reading, Writing and Arithmetic by The Sundays
- Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band
- Pirates by Rickie Lee Jones
- Something/Anything? by Todd Rundgren (nb: this one's contingent upon me (a) buying it, (b) listening to it, (c) liking it, (d) deciding it's worth writing about and (e) feeling sufficiently inspired to bother doing so; as such it would appear to be the early favourite)

In the meantime perhaps I should, like, write stuff. It might help me out next time round. Look for this blog to move away from music and towards expressing my literary frustration in the fields of travel, fiction and essays as well. They say it's good to diversify, you know.

My exercise in literary-musicologist pastiche, not coming to a bookstore near you

My 33 1/3 pitch got rejected this past week. I can't say I'm particularly surprised given that (a) my topic's commercial potential is pitiful and (b) I'm a complete nobody. Still, I stand by my porposal and just to be sure it doesn't just amount to a courteous form letter get stuffed rejection here it is:

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The Dukes of Stratosphear’s Chips from the Chocolate Fireball is remembered – if it’s remembered at all – as a diversion, a stopgap, a bit of fun on the side, as XTC moved from their commercial decline in England and onto their second great period of the late-Eighties. Among their devoted following it is liked but few adore it. Good, certainly, but not teeming with the kind of originality that bursts forth from their key works.

Or so you’d think. Chips is, in truth, a flowering of the imaginations of Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding, a work which far more effectively demonstrated their abilities and range than any album made under their own name in the period between 1980’s Black Sea and ‘86’s Skylarking. Their occasional penchant for earnestness is missing and it’s their first attempt at pop craftsmanship since their modest run of UK Top 40 hits in the late-Seventies and early-Eighties. By the time of Oranges and Lemons in 1989 it was as if XTC were suddenly parodying the Dukes of Stratosphear parodying Sixties pop – and, ultimately, unable to do so as effectively as their alter egos.

The approach I’m going to take with the Chips from the Chocolate Fireball 33 1/3 book is through the axiom “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” but not by imitating the Dukes themselves; rather, I’m planning to imitate famous authors and critics as they weigh in on this album in one way or another. A Lester Bangs review of Psonic Psunspot, for example, or Ian MacDonald analyzing 25 O’clock (the album and E.P. respectively that comprise Chips). I’m also going to include a mock Kenneth Tynan (the wag who labeled Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band a “decisive moment in Western civilization”) review of a mythical album of songs that the Dukes parodied – the Sixties Chips, as I’m calling it – as though it were a Nuggets-like compilation.

In addition, I’m preparing to compose pieces imitating the style of certain writers of significance who I am fond of and comfortable imitating. Barring some sort of brilliant new idea for another parody, I have decided to limit these chapters to the following:

- Telling a mythical tale, in the style of Jorge Luis Borges, all about the Dukes that completely disassociates them from XTC and posits an endless series of songs, stories and paintings that exist to mimic what came before – an infinite parody – and that this is the highest form of expression.

- A Huxley-esque fantasy that imagines a parallel universe where Chips – not Pepper – is the soundtrack to the summer of 1967 and the kind of world that would result.

- A fragmentary collection of terminology, phrases, ideas and lyrics that apply in some way to Chips, deliberately aping Roland Barthes in A Lovers Discourse and Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes.

- A bit of Gonzo Journalism where the Hunter S. Thompson-like author acts as a fly on the wall during a Dukes rehearsal.

(As a pseudonymous work, I’m contemplating not mentioning the name XTC in this book (one exception might be in the Bangs review when he discusses rumors of the Dukes’ true identities and sniffs “much as it sounds otherwise, I hope they aren’t fucking XTC: if they’re able to put out an album free of embarrassing political sloganeering under an assumed name then why can’t they do so under their own name?” or thereabouts) nor the real names of members Partridge, Moulding and Dave Gregory. It’s retrospectively been labeled an XTC album (the 2001 CD reissue gives songwriting credit to Partridge and Moulding) but Chips could never be credited to anyone other than the Dukes of Stratosphear)

Using parody to write about parody: a neat little parlor trick to be sure. But this technique is not going to be used for mere window dressing; I will use imitation as a means of arguing that XTC’s mask freed them from their identities and inhibitions and allowed them to record some of the finest music of their careers. Each section – either mock-review or literary pastiche – will deal with that point.

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I'd like to think this pitch caused a bit of headscratching down at 33 1/3 headquarters in NY. Maybe screwing with the minds of publishers is the best I can hope for. For now.

"Until tomorrow, I'll just keep movin' on": More stamina fun!

At last! No, I'm not rejoicing a blog posting - insubstantial as this is - after much neglect these past few days but happy, at long last, to say that I tried dog soup!

Pictures and a longer story will follow in the next day or so but suffice it to say that the taste, the smell, the curious environment, the mental image of my sister's dog Howie and the girlfriend next to me making obscene "Woof! Woof!" sounds conspired to make it an unforgettable experience.

We'll see just how much I remember tomorrow.

The Grain Elevator Paradox

Don't know what you got till it's gone
Don't know what it is I did so wrong
Now I know what I got, it's just this song
And it ain't easy to get back, takes so long
- Cinderella

In the shade of every moment I bled
Such a sorrow was to be expected
I let a good thing go
- Gemma Hayes

Some things crossing my mind of late, other than the fast-approaching 33 1/3 deadline (but not to worry, I'm nearly done my bold and impossible to ignore pitch): getting ready to leave Korea, the Korean (read: human) desire to neglect nature and heritage in the face of progress, occasional thoughts about death, Clive James' recent panning of Borges' character, how much I hate taking the last bite of a great meal and why Mike Vernon wasn't so bad afterall. No, not much of note kicking around inside the onion these days.

But these thoughts - even the 33 1/3 pitch - are linked by longing for something gone that wasn't particularly revered at the time. This is what I just started calling the Grain Elevator Paradox: only in the face of extinction do we realise just how much something means to us (I like to think this applies to the Borges essay in that only in his final days did he begin to accept democracy and the will of the people - it took his decline for his perception of the real world to be redeemed).

I used to mock grain elevators and now wish for the days when I still could. Passing by a tiny hamlet like Turin, Alberta, I could joke that it had more grain elevators than people; nowadays there are more obese mayors in your average small town (ie one) than there are monuments to Alberta Wheat Pool glory. Ironically, it takes mass destruction for people to finally appreciate what they otherwise didn't care about.

And the same thing seems to be happening here in Korea but you wonder if it's all too late. As I mentioned last time, the economy is starving and it's gotta be fed: too bad it has to be on anything old and traditional (couldn't they tear down, say, a few of Korea's hideous churches?). Strange such a proud people won't do anything.

Back to the 33 1/3 pitch...do you think people will buy a book all about a Cinderella album?

Wither the Korean Economy?

Ever since I arrived here in Korea my students have been telling me about how terrible the Korean economy is. Leaving aside my lefty tendencies that consider all economies to be terrible (any system that relies upon people buying more and more things they mostly don't need can't be anything but), this claim to economic mediocrity begs the obvious question: what makes it so terrible?

There are a few stock answers they give: the IMF, the FTA, the declining and aging population, the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945 but these are offered up as reasons for everything. For sure, the root of all this country's problems lies somehow, in some way with these sources. But based on some anecdotal evidence at my disposal, there's nothing indicating a looming Korean depression. Consider:

- the Korea Times recently reported an economic projection that reckons Korea will be the world's second richest country within thirty to forty years. Granted, this assumes that the nation with the second highest number of people earning $200,000 a year is in actuality the second richest. And odd way to judge wealth to be sure but an impressive fact nonetheless.

- construction of office towers and high rise apartment buildings does not appear to be slowing down. A case could be made that the Korean government is working on a principle of modern day Keynesian economics (ie lavish spending during tough times in order to get the economic ball rolling, if my memories of Social 30 serve me well) but somehow I doubt it. The high powered chaebol's wouldn't be involved in something just to get the engine going.

- the influx of us in no way ubiquitous English teachers continues unabated and doesn't seem to be letting up. Half of Nova Scotia alone seems to teach ESL in Korea.

- the government hopes that every Korean household will have a robot within the next ten years or so (you'd think they were bankrolling these tech companies...oh wait, they are!). They might not be C-3P0 or even Johnny 5 but having a robot vacuum your floor is still pretty cool.

All of this makes me wonder how on Earth the Korean economy could be wallowing in the depths that it supposedly is. Obviously it has nothing to do with the chaebols and government conspiring to make everyone believe that because it isn't growing at the same rate as before then - ipso facto - there's a recession transpiring. No, of course that theory is ludicrous. But what do I know?

Find a city, find myself a city to live in

With one of my former adopted homes currently in a state that makes it even more unliveable than normal, another still under the jackboot of martial law and Basildon being, well, Basildon, you'd think I'd feel a little more well disposed towards both my hometown and Bucheon, my city of residence over the last eleven months. But I have my reasons for not being all that crazy about either of them.

I'm set to return to Calgary within the next four or five months and, beyond the excitement of seeing my niece in person for the first time and spending plenty of quality time with both my family and friends, the pervading feeling is one of dread (not an all-encompassing feeling, mind you, more the kind that knaws on you at the back of your mind). The two previous times I came back home from Asia I found myself lost, not short on things I wanted to do, just at a complete loss on how to do them. It's made me resentful of Calgary and all its money and the feeling that I was being shut out. Only recently did I begin to think that maybe I wasn't entirely blameless for my problems.

As much as I want to redeem myself for my mistakes, I can't seem to get past the fact that I'm from a scary place. Paul Heaton was probably singing about London in his song "Bow Down" but I only hear Calgary in it:

Mother, Father, I think that I would rather,
Stay at home with you for another year,
That building's so tall and it makes me feel so small,
That I might get lost and simply disappear.

As for Bucheon, the overall feeling is one of ennui. Kristina often remarks on how much she'll miss it here but I can't ever imagine missing a city. I'll miss certain things about it, particularly the people, but it's just a city. Maybe this is the Buddhist (or the Jedi) in me but I no longer feel attached to one place. That what all this travel does. And that's definitely what living in Basildon does.

So, then, where do I go next?

That creep sure can roll, man (or Ode to Ion Replenishment)

I first tried Pocari Sweat back in Indonesia and immediately regretted doing so. Tasting vaguely like a flat Fresca mixed with salty water, I had it pegged as one of those Asian curiosities - like their penchant for red bean pastries and men dressed in pink.

But I've begun to warm up to it as late. I started up this blog a couple months ago intending to provide weekly updates of my bowling scores. Thinking this would spur me on to my goal of rolling a 200 game, it instead led me into a bleak phase where I was struggling through several 80 point "efforts" (which, suffice it to say, was why the bowling updates were quickly and unceremoniously abandoned). But I'm slowly regaining my form and I've got Asia's favourite Ion supply drink to thank for it.

(For a nation so proud of its ability to thrive on a permanent drunken stupor, Korea's bowling allies are strangely booze-free environments. There's nary an Oat Soda or Caucasian to be found at the Bucheon Bowling Club; we have to make do with cans of Pocari Sweat and Pine Juice. Don't they know that bowling and beer go together like red bean paste and rice cakes?)

And the added ions appear to be paying off. I won't claim that I'm becoming consistent because I was consistent before and that was consistently poor. Now I've developed into the wonderfully erratic player I've always wanted to be. Last Friday's solid 135 was followed by a piss-poor 71 (and it's a wonder I even did that well considering the 19 I scored on the final frame) but I wouldn't want it any other way. I played again this afternoon with Jason and managed a 176 so expect an 83 or so next time round; bowling sober does this to a guy.