This and That

The problem with blogging is that when you spend a month updating daily, you feel really guilty when you miss a few days in a row. I don't even have any real work to do, and still I manage to slack off!

After Saturday night's outing, I failed to mention that the subways stopped running while I was on my way home. I ended up dumped off at a stop with no connecting lines and with very little idea of where I was. I walked a few blocks looking for a bus stop, but I finally gave up and hailed a cab.

By the way, this is the first time I've ever hailed a cab! I felt pretty proud and worldly until it occurred to me the ridonckulous level of privilege that has allowed me not to have need to hail a cab until the age of twenty-two. Oh, well. I managed to tell the driver how to get where I was going even though I utterly failed to understand anything else he said during the ride.

I ended up staying up so late that night that I slept well into early afternoon on Sunday. I went and saw Nightmare on Elm Street, which was... well, I like bad horror movies, but this movie wasn't bad so much as boring. Freddy wasn't scary. In fact, none of it was scary. It managed to startle me a few times, but that's easy. A startle can be achieved by having something flash across the screen accompanied by a loud piano chord. A scare is more insidious, and requires pacing, atmosphere, and immersion. This movie had none of those. Also, the writing is consistently awful. At once point, when our heroine is being warned that staying awake for too long could cause brain damage and coma, this line is uttered: "Coma... that means permanent sleep." This is said at though it's supposed to be chilling! It is not! It is merely sad! And that isn't even the worst line in this movie; my brain has generously blocked my memories of all the particularly ear-grating scenes.


I was pleasantly surprised at how it handled gender though. The very first scene made me nervous - a young man sits at a booth in a diner and asks a waitress for a refill on his coffee as she walks by; when she doesn't respond, he mutters under his breath, "Bitch." I think to myself, "OH GREAT. The fourth line uttered in this movie is a gendered slur. We're off to a great start." But wait! Five minutes later that asshole young man has had his throat gorily sliced open, and shortly thereafter we realize that the waitress is actually the heroine of this movie! Hooray!

Okay, it's not all hugs and puppies. Of course the two teenagers who have sex are immediately offed, because GOD KNOWS we can't have a heroine with a healthy and functioning sexuality. Also, there's an entirely creepy molestation scene and an entirely gratuitous bathtub scene (I'm talking loving shots of the heroine letting her bathrobe fall to the floor, a shot with the camera between her raised knees, and a shot of Freddy's bladed hand coming up out of the water as if being birthed from her vagina - YUCK). But I've come to expect these things from Hollywood. Oh, Hollywood, our relationship is so tumultuous. It only hits me because it loves me.

 But there is an alternative: Korean movies! Ironically, I cannot watch them now that I am in Korea, because they don't have subtitles. Boo. I already expressed my desire to see a movie about three bandit-mask-wearing, gun-toting grandmas, but here's a new one. I saw the trailer for it and despite not understanding a single word, I know what the plot is. A bunch of guys who happen to be huge soccer fans start their military service just as the World Cup begins. But alas! They are not allowed to follow their beloved team's games! There is a scene of a hard-faced officer tearing a hurt-looking man's Red Devils shirt out of his hands and throwing it into a fire, leaving the man clutching a torn-off scrap of red fabric and looking as though the officer just shot his dog. So, as you do, these men band together to build a radio in secret so they can listen to the games in a cramped basement somewhere on their base. It looks hilarious. Hollywood, please subtitle these movies in English and release them in the United States? I promise I'll forgive you for fucking up the end of Robin Hood.

I can't believe I didn't notice this before. There is a Jackie Chan-themed restaurant in the mall! This makes me inordinately happy.

"Two thumbs up!" Haha, cartoon Jackie Chan. That is only one thumb!

I had slept for so long on Sunday that I actually didn't sleep Sunday night. I checked my emails, read some webcomics, fooled around on some message boards, and suddenly it was light out. I felt fine, and when I expressed worry to Stellar via Skype about my odd sleeping habits, her reaction was (paraphrased), "Psh. You're only twenty-two. You can handle the occasional all-nighter. Now quit whining." She had a point, so I went out for waffles.

Mmmmm... waffles. This was an epic waffle. It had loads of whipped cream, cinnamon sugar, and apple jelly on top. Under all that the waffle itself was crispy yet moist. Perfect. So of course there was a walnut in it. It's not like I got confused and ordered the apple and cinnamon and WALNUT version either. There was just a single walnut cooked right into the center of the waffle. So I cursed my luck, spat it out, spent some time in the bathroom washing my mouth out... and then I came back and finished the waffle. Carefully. What? It was a really good waffle!

On Monday I inadvertently had two dinners. The first was with Kris's colleagues, who informed me that between my trip to China and their schedules, this would be our last meeting. Sad! I really like these women, not least because they challenge me to eat things I wouldn't otherwise, like the very spicy dish in the picture with octopus legs in it.

But right after I said goodbye to them, Kris called me. She was going with Sunghun and Eugene to eat tuna and drink soju! Did I want to come? Um, why yes I did! Man, one bite of this tuna made me forget how full I was. It is delicious dipped in wasabi and rolled up with seaweed.

But we couldn't drink soju without getting into politics. Turns out Sunghun is on my side on the gay adoption debate! I was pleased, but we couldn't change Eugene's mind. We got him to agree that gay people were not gay by choice, that they deserved rights and protection from persecution based on their sexuality, that they were no less likely than straight people to be excellent adoptive parents, and that there are many more children waiting to be adopted than there are families willing to adopt them (so every potential adopter turned away means one more kid growing up in the system). But he still wouldn't concede that gay people should be allowed to adopt. This defies logic, and I have a pretty healthy respect for logic, so I was understandably miffed. But it was apparent that nothing we were going to say was going to change his mind, so we left it alone.

Don't worry, I wasn't being unnecessarily combative. We all had fun debating the point, and afterward Eugene and Sunghun ganged up on me for not knowing what I was talking about concerning international banking, so I think we're even.

That's what you missed! Tomorrow I'm meeting Eunmi in the afternoon, and we're going to see Phantom. I haven't seen it for real since I went with Morgan Armstrong in the fourth grade! I'm so excited! If I don't get distracted and spaz out again, I'll be sure to tell you how it went.