i think mark will particularly appreciate this; it has a very duck dodgers vibe:

i guess this is part of a whole disney series

Mini-blog: Still in a somewhat relieved mood after defending. I was pretty beat at the end of last week and over the weekend, but I’m starting to get caught up on some personal stuff, practicing guitar, trying to do some reading. Oh man, Snow Country is kicking my ass. I think I’ve started this book three times. There’s just something about the narrator that just doesn’t appeal to me. I suspect that he was probably the definition of suave in 1920s Japan but it just doesn’t translate, at least for me. But I’ll keep at it.

This is pretty much essential viewing. I’m in awe of people with this kind of talent.

Coffee Prince: As you may know, when I really began to lose interest in mass entertainment, I was still watching Korean horror movies. Really wasn’t a straight line between that and Korean television dramas but I’d say I’ve become a fan over the past month. Coffee Prince was the first kdrama I watched and it definitely hooked me.

The basic plot: Eun Chan is a 24 year old tomboy who has struggled to support her mother and younger sister since her father passed away. She makes money by working at part time jobs such as being a taekwondo instructor, peeling chestnuts, stitching eyes on stuffed animals, and delivering newspapers and milk. Choi Han-gyul is heir to a wealthy family in the coffee business who has just returned to Seoul from studying abroad. His aimless lifestyle raises the hackles of his grandmother, the family matriarch, who is eager to see him married off and start a career. Han-gyul first meets Eun Chan by chance when she prevents his date’s purse from being stolen. He mistakes Eun Chan for a boy and offers her a job to pose as his boyfriend in order to sabotage some blind dates which his grandmother has arranged. You can see where this is going. The Twelfth Night situation is the main source of conflict and drama in the series. Since watching Coffee Prince I’ve seen other kdramas and wanted to talk about the general appeal a little below. Specific to Coffee Prince, however, it would be hard not to notice how charming Yoon Eun Hye is. She’s a famous actress so she’s obviously very pretty. But, within the role, I think she balances the credibility of her passing as a boy with feminine appeal. She also projects a kind of innocent boundless enthusiasm in a way that just levels you emotionally. Also, the soundtrack is, at times, such a snapshot of Zach’s music taste circa 2002, with artists such as Kings of Convenience and Azure Ray being featured prominently.

I’ve also been thinking a lot recently about what makes kdrama different than American television and why I find it to be so much more appealing. It’s a combination of a number of things, but overall I’d say Korean dramas obtain a certain frankness in a way that domestic entertainment never does. Here, everything always has to be some ridiculous overwrought statement, justice must always prevail, there always has to be a moral, a character will never get away with being a jerk if it isn’t justified as the symptom of a tragic flaw or if he or she is not a villain. It just gets to the point where it’s so far outside any conceivable realm of applicability to your own life that, minus the blatant appeal to the vanity of an inner psychodrama, it just starts to feel completely alienating. I mean, take the best recent American tv like Lost or all those HBO shows. Seriously, does that bodice ripper emotion shit mean anything to me? The image above is of a bottle of Soju, or Korean rice wine, which I guess is kind of the Korean analog of sake. It shows up all the time in kdramas. It kind of struck me as odd in the beginning but I guess that’s because I was so used to tv here where you hardly ever see people drink except if the show is about alcoholism or something. I guess that’s one example of what I mean by a frankness, i.e. things may not be perfect but the sun is still going to rise tomorrow morning. And this applies to all sorts of topics which kdramas touch on such as basic money troubles, relationship issues, etc.

That’s not to say that there aren’t some noticeable issues with kdramas. They can be very picture perfect in their portrayal of city life and love (everyone being uniformly attractive, designer clothes, and all kinds of crazy fancy apartments) but, for me, that’s forgivable as you can tuck away an awareness of the illusion in the back of your thoughts. And I guess it goes without saying that you’ll get an ambivalent impression comparing the world of kdramas with the world as presented in the films of Kim Ki-duk for example. What isn’t cool though is that apparently, and I don’t pretend to be an expert on this, the working conditions in the entertainment industry can be exploitative to the talent. If you followed the news from 2009 you may remember that there were a series of high profile suicides in the Korean entertainment industry. The story of Jang Ja Yeon in particular is heartbreaking to read and I think should make anyone think twice about what they see on screen.

Sorry for the scatterbrained nature of this review. I lost part of it while I was writing.

I’ve been either too busy or not inspired enough to post anything of substance over the last couple of weeks, but my media consumption has continued unabated.  So here’s a summary of some of what I’ve been experiencing:

Fang Island (Self-titled album).  I downloaded this off of itunes after Zach and I saw this Brooklyn-based happy metal machine open for Red Sparowes in Sacramento a couple of months back.  There’s something both heartwarming and ludicrous about this quintet, which aptly describes their music as “the sound of everybody high-fiving each other.” While Fang Island on record is good, they are even more of a beer-swilling, head-banging, vocal-harmonizing guitar-soloing juggernaut live.  Like Styx for hipsters…in a good way.  Fang Island provided a welcome palate cleanser at the Red Sparowes show by essentially bursting the bubble of avant metal humorlessness.  Also, the whole band is originally from Rhode Island and one of the guys in the band used to work at this great video rental place in Providence.

Battlestar Gallactica (the first three or so seasons of the series).  Holy Lords of Kobol is Battlestar Gallactica good!  Sci-fi of the highbrow/refracted mirror kind, and amazingly great considering the poor quality of its source material.  Plus, Edward James Olmos literally captains the ship as Commander Bill Adama, who is about as stoic as they come, but isn’t above punching his son in the gut while sparring in the gym.  BSG has all of The Next Generation’s high seriousness without its sometimes cloying moral clarity, and tackles a series of topical issues including torture, electoral politics, civilian command of the military, and journalistic ethics.  And the character development is great.

Inception. Roaring Shark West Coast saw Chris Nolan’s latest exercise in self-serious conceptual weirdness a couple of nights ago.  I had heard some devastatingly bad reviews of this movie, so I went in with low expectations, and was consequently pleased.  The plot is ridiculous but nonetheless entertaining, though it annoyingly manages to recycle a whole lot of Freud, whose theories on identity projection, the subconsciousness, totems, etc. are ransacked for the purpose of making art (or artiness).  The sets are predictably elegant and the cinematography clean, though my favorite part of the movie involves what can only be described as Nolan getting his way with a big budget and inserting a protracted ski and snowmobile-based battle in an alpine forest.  This is probably the closest I’ve ever seen Nolan get to goofy humor.  Nolan brings out his repertory company for this one – Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy and, oh yeah, Michael Caine show up for the dreamy madness.

0:10 – “evolution best explains the origins of LIFE????”

Interview with G. Willow Wilson – The whole interview is great, which isn’t surprising given how well Willow writes. Ross may even be interested in the book she’s promoting, “The Butterfly Mosque” because it’s non-fiction. Here’s a question & answer I found particularly thought-provoking:

If there is no universal literature, as you put it, what commonness allows us to translate between different experiences and values? Can we really understand one another, or do we only approach a respectful sympathy? Can a secular worldview engage a religious worldview?

Honestly, I hate to say it, but I think the answer is no. There is no real 1:1 translation of experiences and values that I have found. I think respectful sympathy is as close to understanding as we can get. And I think it’s vitally necessary—the grave problem with our Western idea of tolerance is that it hinges on understanding. Real tolerance means respecting other people even when they baffle you and you have no idea why they think what they think. And in this world, if we are being truthful with ourselves, one is baffled far more often than one reaches understanding. Humility and sympathy are two of the greatest unsung weapons against intolerance. This is something I learned from my friends and in-laws in Egypt, to whom my life before I converted and came to live with them was unthinkable. (Tattoos? Clubbing? These things don’t exist for them, especially where women are concerned.) Their love for me was a decision: even if we find her history alarming and bizarre, she is here now, she is our responsibility, and we are going to love her and accept her. I didn’t have to prove anything, to explain anything. That kind of acceptance blew me away. It’s shattering to be loved that way.

More after the cut.
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I’m sure you’ve seen these ads, the AT&T vs. Verizon commercials where Luke Wilson is kind of schlepping around different locales talking about how AT&T’s 3G network is so much hotter than Verizon’s. I don’t really have a dog in this fight, my phone can barely make calls, let alone get online. But what really annoys me is how “put together” these commercials are. Like every single commercial exists as an annoying tableau in orange and white. And then Wilson’s vague doughiness talking at you in his smug manner is just so supremely unconvincing. That’s not even mentioning how snide and snipey the text of the commercials are. But yeah I think I object most to the visual aspect of the commericals. Like everything takes place in this very spartan AT&T universe. Although it has an element of corporate art (viz. Mark’s earlier post) it also has this overpowering nature that I for whatever reason find really distasteful. I know I’m nuts, but here are a few choice commercials:

at&t warehouse:

at&t apartment (does this situation ever happen to anyone?):

at&t restaurant (nice message about raising your kids – just give ‘em an iphone and shut ‘em up):

does anyone else see this???? different garbage under the cut.

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Note: this post engages in a series of blatant and hopefully amusing stereotypes.

My brief daily commute between Sacramento and Davis gives me some time to think about advertising – this is usually prompted by the many billboards posted along the side of I-80, which lately have included one from Heineken, a watery Dutch lager widely consumed by frat boys and which tastes about the same as Bud Light.  Heineken’s current ad campaign, centered on the rather enigmatic tagline “Give Yourself a Good Name,” has been getting me thinking of late.  I say “enigmatic” in reference to the tagline because of its odd juxtaposition of the notion of winning or maintaining one’s “good name” – suggestive of a system of values rooted in the landed aristocracy – and the numerous hipster cultural cues embedded in the campaign’s print and TV advertisements.  Stepping back from this problem for a minute and looking at the (assumed) marketing motive behind the campaign, it seems like the idea is to associate Heineken with a certain type of hip, New York-centric, twenty-something bar culture, in which the idea of “giv[ing] yourself a good name” might mean something along the lines of burning a copy of the latest Animal Collective album for a friend, introducing your roommate to that hot girl from the artists’ collective, or hopefully from the perspective of the advertiser, buying your mustachioed, fixie-riding compatriots some Heineken!  In other words, Heineken is trying to trade up, at least at the level of appearance, from the frat boys who have reliably consumed Heineken since time immemorial, to the NYC post-college crowd.

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i love the way the guy chokes out “both.”

i don’t know how actors do this stuff without bursting out laughing or something. i’m pretty into whazzat kangaroo.

in typical fashion, here i am again to offer up some stupid, silly fluff video content to divert attention from the actually worthwhile posts (the great Drago/Hearne interview and the subsequent discussion, in this case).

My girlfriend and I have just finished watching two seasons worth of Mad Men.  Here are a few things I’ve learned from the show.  Note that these lessons largely ignore the distinction between the “real” early 1960s and the time period as it’s portrayed on the show – sort of like I choose to believe that Tommy Carcetti from The Wire is the actual mayor of Baltimore.  Don’t take this too seriously, in other words.

1. Toxic social mores and standards of formality seem to be inversely related.  Don Draper and company are actively sexist, passively racist, sometimes homophobic pigs.  They also wear incredible suits.  Hopefully this is coincidental, as I’d like to wear cool suits without acting like a bastard.

2. Whether someone is an alcoholic is as much a social determination as it is medical. 

3. If there is one area in which we’ve improved as a society since the era of Mad Men, it’s in…our attitude toward littering.*  If there’s something we’ve lost, it’s an acceptance of our God-given right to drink on the commuter rail.**

4. Guns seem to have been as available during the 1950s/early 1960s as they are now, and yet homicide rates were lower then.  This would seem to challenge the argument that it’s the over-abundance of guns that’s the problem.  Then again, Pete Campbell just might kill somebody with that shotgun of his.

5. Straight American men have become progressively less comfortable with form-fitting clothing.  For further evidence, see old NBA footage.  

6. Golf was nearly as lame in 1963 as it is now.  What makes it even lamer now? The golf cart.  

* = Women also seem to be better treated in the workplace.

** = And I mean actually purchasing a cocktail on the commuter rail and drinking it in your seat…while smoking.